I just got my first printer too. Some dude was selling an Ender 3 v2 in a junk shop for $30. I bought it, tinkered with it for a bit, spent $100 on bits for it, and it’s going like a champ now. New, it would have cost me $450. It took me like 2 weeks and a lot of input from this community, but I’m confident with it now. I highly recommend the printer, even for a total newb. Cura, TinkerCAD, and Blender are all free, and I’m basically just having a blast. Stay away from Bambu - even new to the game, I know that much. Good luck!

If you’re an engineer, go with the prusa if you don’t want to dick around with the printer itself after. Get the XL multi tool of course if you want multi material.

You should not that multi material isn’t analogous to multi-colour. You’ll never get the shading and a million colours with multi material (or mmu/amu style) as you need your filament to be the colour you want to print in. Post processing ipso facto is the only way to get true colour shading.

You can go with prusa HT as an affordable (10k) engineering printer. It will print up to amorphous Peek. Of course there’s no multi material with this.

I don’t want 3D printing itself to be my hobby

Folks recommend Bambu but I’m also conscious of much cheaper options available that would do what I need.

People recommend Bambu because they are the easiest to use. They’re also the single greatest threat to the open ecosystem of printers.

As a general rule the more you spend up front, the less you will spend (in time and money) to fix and maintain the thing.

3D printers are finicky which is why they often become a whole hobby on their own.

As part of that, I’d strongly recommend you stick to one of the easier to work with materials (PLA and TPU seem to be popular rn). Those are good enough 99% of the time, and printing more exotic materials is more work. If you really need a better material, prototype in PLA and then buy a professionally printed final piece (I’ve personally used Shapeways a couple times. I wouldn’t call it cheap but for small parts it’s reasonable and the quality of the end result is quite good).

I personally am using an EnderV3 right now. It’s very customizable, and was one of the cheapest options when I bought it, but it tends to take a lot of debugging every time I want to make something.

I’m going to throw the Prusa Core One into the ring:

The first thing you will probably notice compared to something like Bambu Labs printers is the price. Yes, it’s high. However, Prusa is doing a lot more than just building 3D Printers, they are also developing the slicer software PrusaSlicer which many, including Bambu Labs Slicer, are based on and make it available for free to anyone. Also, their customer support is top of the line.

Don’t let the fact that you assemble the printer from the ground up let you scare away. I am not exactly a precision engineer myself and got everything working flawlessly on my first try.

Background: I just got my first printer (Bambu Lab A1 mini) last year. I am also not an engineer and, like you, don’t want the printer itself to be the hobby.

Based on my experience, and what I’ve seen others say online, Bambu Lab is still the king of “it just works”. If you’re not as ideologically motivated by right to own as I am, I’d say go with Bambu.

While I have zero experience with the company, Prusa seems to be the most consumer friendly, though they have their own issues. If I buy a second printer, it’s likely going to be the Prusa Core One.

Bambu p1s + ams.

My maker space got one because we were sick of farting around with half working printers, it’s been a workhorse for like 2 years now.

Then I bought one 6 months ago and I can count on one hand the number of failed prints.

I’ll go against the grain here - I’m still rocking an unmodded Ender 3 Pro from 2019. It sits in my garage now as a tool for functional prints, though I’ve done the odd articulated print for kids.

I generally only ever use black or white PLA. I pretty much never calibrate it any more now it’s set up. I just don’t see the need to upgrade. Yes, it’s slower and louder than newer 3D printers and there’s no web interface, but the dimensional accuracy and quality is there for 99% of functional prints.

My friend has a Bambu Lab P1S and for fine detail it’s definitely higher quality, so if you’re designing micro parts (eg. PCB housings) I’d go with something newer, but if your functional prints are going to need around 0.05-0.1mm accuracy, an older 3D printer will do the job just fine.

I imagine they’re dirt cheap on the second hand market right now. Might be worth trying one before diving into something more expensive?

Edit: forgot to mention, the only time I get a failed print is when I give it something stupid to attempt, like with no supports. This will be the learning curve with any 3D printer and getting used to how slicers work. You’ll eventually build an intuition around this workflow, but I don’t believe the choice in printer will matter here - correct me if I’m wrong folks.

I think it’s important to remember that hobby level printers often require some amount of hobby level tinkering. There are many plug and print options available, and anything is extendable if you want to put the work into it (i.e. don’t fret if multicolor or multi-material are available yet or not, it’s always possible to mod a printer later). Any new cutting edge tech will likely have a bunch of bugs to work out, so expect some hurdles when adopting it.

If you want something to print here and there, it might be worthwhile to look at makerspaces near you. Let a shop handle the tinkering and machine upkeep and yet have something ready when you need it. Makerspaces often have a ton of additional resources so you aren’t stuck to just plastics.

But having worked with numerous off the shelf printers and finally building a Voron, I think it’s important for any printer owner to know how their machine is pieces together/how it works. Then, when things go wrong you’re able to fix them without much fuss. You don’t need to be an engineer to operate one, but it helps to know what’s holding each piece together and where the moving parts travel in order to quickly fix issues.

Brother’s laser. They’re trying to enshittify them but they started really good

I wouldn’t let multicolor be a barrier for entry for you. It’s something that can technically be added later*, but it is much more difficult to convert a printer to be able to work with engineering materials. Personally speaking, I also wouldn’t mix multicolor and engineering materials ABS is pretty cheap but anything that would need a hardened nozzle (like glass or carbon fiber reinforced filaments) is almost too expensive to waste purging. Plus, if I’m remembering correctly, color swapped prints aren’t quite as strong structurally as monofilament prints.

* technically speaking as long as your printer can run Klipper, there are community projects like Box Turtle or Enraged Rabbit that are meant for more general use (if you’re okay tinkering with things) if Elegoo never gets around to releasing their multicolor unit.

Also something to consider, the average size of what you’ll be printing. Yes, you can make things in multiple pieces, however if youre constantly printing parts that dont fit the “standard” ~250mm cube you may want to look at the larger format printers

I heard 3d printers are quite cheap on the used market, so maybe its worth a look for you.

I thought that I would constantly need an AMS, but it turns out for me at least it is just not needed… You could always design your prints in a way where you just manually change the filament on a specific layer (set in the slicer) and print with the other filament that way. Sure an AMS can do much more, the question is how often would you need that capability.

Do you need one? There is a 3d printing service near me that has better printers than I could afford that is happy to print for me. For many the cost of a service is less than printer for as little as they really print so something to think about. Check your options. If 3d printing isn’t the hobby but a means this might be your better option. Don’t forget that once you agree to outsource creating parts you get access to wood, metals, and additional plastics. You also get many more processes (injection molding, lathe, milling machines, SLA/Resin printers) which lets give you many more options. And you get access to machines that wouldn’t even fit in your garage.

I’m not saying don’t get a 3d printer. For some it is the right decision. I’m saying don’t overlook the other options. Even if you get a 3d printer you should use the other services instead of making everything a nail just because you have a hammer.

I think autocorrect screwed you. Qidi was changed to Audi. I haven’t used the q2 but my max 3 has been so solid that i bought a second one. Side note, i bought the kobra 3 combo when it was first introduced. It’s not terrible… i would go qidi over kobra for sure. I did get a centauri carbon for my dad a few weeks ago. He does hobby type stuff but has run it nonstop and it hasn’t missed a beat.