I see a Creality Ender 3 V3 (not SE or KE) for $130 refurbished, and also a Creality CR-10 SE for $103 refurbished on ebay. Are either or these a good choice to get into the hobby, or am I making a mistake? Should I rather buy a Bambu? My budget is around $100-$200 max. Please advise.
To be honest: For that money I would rather go for another 50- 100$ if you can somehow afford them and consider a centauri carbon 1.
They are decent, work out of the box, now offer a open source firmware and you are set to print basicay everything beside automatic multicolor (which might or might not come…very likely not ). But they are good for all technical filaments, they are fully endclosed,etc.
Don’t get a refurbished printer. Never.
And stay away from Bambu unless you are aware of the walled garden.
If its your first printer I would not go for a second-hand one. There are so many ways you can subtly mess up a printer and if you don’t know your way around printers yet, then it’s quite hard to fix all that.
Considering you can get a Bambulab A1 mini which does everything out of the box and works better out of the box than an Ender 3 after months of upgrades.
Thanks for the advice. I hadn’t considered that refurbished printers are technically used ones with inspection. Is it that important to avoid used printers for a first printer? I had no idea.
“refurbished” is a word that might not mean anything either.
When buying your first printer you should first choose what you want: Do you want to print or do you want to tinker?
If you want to print, get a printer like the Bambulab a1 mini. If you want to tinker, an Ender 3 is ok.
If you want to really tinker a lot, get an used one.
But I really wouldn’t recommend getting an used printer for your first one since you don’t know how they have been treated and messed up.
Thank you that’s very useful
I’m seeing FLASHFORGE 3D Printer Adventurer 5M new for $200 after coupons. Would you recommend the A1 mini or the 5M?
Tbh, no Idea. I haven’t heard anything about the Flashforge one, so I can’t say anything about it. Maybe look for some reviews.
I’m seeing FLASHFORGE 3D Printer Adventurer 5M new for $200 after coupons. Would you recommend the A1 mini or the 5M?
I haven’t used the flashforge but my brother who never did any 3d printing before got it and loves it. He says it just works. I just got the elagoo centauri carbon for 300 and it’s so great but might be out of your price range. If your just printing with pla flashforge is probably the way to go. I never liked bedslingers since tall prints tend to tip over or delaminate and I keep my printers in my garage where temperatures can swim and change the prints drastically.
It depends on the type of person you are. Those machines you reference are in a class of machine where you are likely to have to put a lot of work into them to get them running reliably and probably more money than if you just bought a better printer from the get go. They are machines to recommend people who want the 3D Printer to be their hobby rather than designing and printing stuff.
If that doesn’t sound like you, just buy a used Bambu or Prusa even if you need to delay the purchase to save up longer.
Thanks for the advice. I do know that I am sort of the kind who picks the flavor of the month to get obsessed over, then throw it away for the next shiny thing, so I am a bit of both of your usecases.
I got an Ender 3 V3 KE. I am long past obsessing with 3D printing but it bleeds into my other hobbies or fixing things around the house.
“I need a plastic thing that is this-this-and-this dimensions…” I model it in FreeCAD, do a few test prints, adjust my design and re-print until satisfied.
A 3D printer became a tool that I use a couple of times per month.
A creality anything shouldn’t be your first printer. I own two creality printers.
creality is for tinkerers not printers
I tell people if you want a printer with the most upgrade paths, pick the ender 3 stock. You can make it bigger or taller, add direct drive, magnetic beds, put a laser on it or a cutter, switch out the board for different firmware, all available on alibaba.
I picked up a used ender 3 V3 se off of marketplace for $60 and had to repair it. Since then it’s been printing 10x better than my anycubic kobra neo. I think it comes down to slicer profiles in orca slicer. The ender 3 was a wildly popular printer compared to the kobra. Cheap printers cut corners but can still print good. If you’re not mechanically inclined then don’t get a cheap printer.
My ender 3 stock wasn’t my first printe and isn’t my only printer, but some days it’s my best printer.
You can get a new Sovol SV06 for less than $200. That worked very well out of the box compared to my older Ender 3. Prusaslicer also has a good profile for it. I don’t care for Cura slicer as much. Enders are of an older generation of printers that I will personally avoid just because of the legacy of having to tinker with them just to get them to work. The opposite end is the Bambu where “it just works” except it doesn’t always and it’s not as easy to fix and it doesn’t play well with third parties. Sovol is a good starter printer that I’d had even better bed adhesion with over Prusa MK4Ss at work.
Thanks for the advice. I’ll look into that one.
Not a mistake, I’ve got an ender 3 and a cr10. Both are fine, keep your expectations realistic and calibrate each axis, especially the extruders. Use PLA, consider getting a new build plate if your prints won’t stick. I recommend flashing firmware on the ender 3 unless you know what was loaded onto it last, doesn’t have to be fancy firmware just something you know for sure is configured for your printer. A cr10 should probably get firmware as well but I never loaded new firmware on mine and the controller is older so I’m not sure if it’s a good idea.
Don’t forget the cost of filament, if you print a lot you may spend more on filament in a year that your printer budget.
I have a CR-10s that I bought used. I asked the seller to ensure that it worked before I bought it. Most of my problems I had with the printer are due to me trying to make it print faster. If I had just downloaded Cura and used the default profiles it would have served me well.
Learning how to level a bed is probably the most significant skill you will need. It’s not too hard.
I went from the Ender 3 v3, to the Anycubic Kobra 3, and the difference is so wide, or makes it hard to recommend the Ender. With the Ender I could do small simple models, but anything with multiple parts were hard to dial in tolerances. The anycubic allows me to do multiple days of printing and be assured all the parts will come together. I now also get error handling so a tangle or running out of filament won’t ruin the job. It even resumes after power loss. I know it’s not in your budget, but the difference is very noticeable.
I have a CR-10 clone and maybe because it’s a clone, but I now have to calibrate it before every print. It was good when it was brand new but quickly forced me to learn troubleshooting.
