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.
Lots of comments here, plenty of information for you. I’ll add to the pile that I started playing with my buddies stock ender 3, fought it often, lots of tweaking and configuring.
Then I got my own ender 3v2, and fought it less, but still needs tinkering. Usually though I can fire it up and print small stuff without touching it. I print infrequently these days, so the procedure usually involves wiping the dust off the bed first. But it works well enough for my needs.
I tend to get into hobbies for awhile and then back off, so I’m glad I didn’t spend more. And really, while $300 is a lot of money in many ways, in some ways it’s not so much. I’m glad I have a printer, it is occasionally highly useful. But I’m glad I don’t have a $600-1000 printer. Personally 🤷♂️ but that’s just me.
That’s kind of exactly me. I have a bunch of discarded hobbies. I have hundreds of dollars worth of esp32 circuit stuff, rotary woodworking stuff, musical instruments, sewing machines, power tools, painting supplies, fitness equipments, etc. collecting dust because I get super into something for a while and then don’t touch them anymore. At this point, I don’t even know if I should actually get a 3d printer.
Wow, are you me? Haha also circuit stuff, woodworking when I was a kid, piano I never play, just got my first sewing machine a few months ago.
Add in fpv drones, ham radio, meshtastic, homelab, enthusiast grade flashlights, longboarding, snowboarding, wake surfing, backpacking, flipperzero, LINUX! Lol you can run out of time and money pretty quickly.
But, do all these things just a little, and it’s good.
Do you really never ever touch your stuff anymore? Or just nowhere near as much as you did?
Because for me, I still sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, utilize the skills I gained. I don’t go hard on any single one of those things anymore, but I’m glad that I did, or at least I tell myself I am. Now when I go backpacking, I know I have the best flashlight for the job. When I play with meshtastic, my ham radio skills tell me my antenna placement is optimal. When we were sending a care package to a sick friend, we thought of a funny inside joke to reference, so I dusted off the 3D printer and printed up a couple trinkets that were perfectly matched to the joke. When I decided to set up my homelab, my previous love of Linux made it easier to set up proxmox. When I wanted to use my camp chair at the beach, I was able to sew a sheet to stretch between the feet to support me on the sand.
It’s up to you what you wanna do. But I don’t view my hobby jumping as a bad thing. So long as I keep the spending more or less in check, who cares? I’m having fun, learning skills, and those skills can come in handy.
Other people are sometimes jealous of my ability to learn and enjoy so many things. I’m able to help them when they get started later, because I have an approximate knowledge of many things 😂
I say go for it 😁