3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: !functionalprint@kbin.social or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
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A 3d printer is a tool, and in my opinion you should get a cheap tool before dropping good money on a proper one. That way you'll know if you need the 300mm bed, or direct drive extruder and silent stepper drivers, with an enclosure.
However when you are looking for a cheap printer, I'd try to get one with auto bed leveling, since all the good printers have one, and manual bed leveling suck with no reward at the end.
Ender3v2/3 is a good starting point. Lots of parts online, and YouTube tutorials and guides for how to get it to work. FlashForge is another.
When you wanna throw it out a window, Prusa is my goto, though BambuLabs is getting some clout from their marketing push. I have personal gripes about them, but so far they seem legit.
I feel the opposite. Cheap tools often are missing many of the QOL features that make learning a new tool enjoyable. Pick up an old 80s style hollow tip soldering iron to learn and you’re just going to think soldering is difficult. Pick up a modern self contained heating element iron, and you’ll spend a lot less time wondering, “am I doing this wrong, why isn’t it melting?”
Similarly, if you intend to use a 3d printer as a tool, you’re not going to want to spend the requisite dozens of hours of tuning and part swapping to get a solid running Ender 3. Buy a decent tool and spend your time learning how to use it, buy a cheap tool and spend your time learning to work around it.
I agree if we were talking about an Ender3 V1 or V2
However with the Ender-3 S1 which had auto bed levelling and has a direct drive extruder. All for well under the price of a Prusa and Bambu Labs. It's a good first step.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
I agree if we were talking about an Ender3 V1 or V2
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Could not have said it better myself.
I learned so much with my first printer (CR-10). It was fiddly though and took a bit of tweaking each time to get a good first layer. Now I have a Prusa and it is so reliable that I almost miss the tinkering sometimes. I'll regularly start prints while I'm out of the house and can come home to perfect prints with no hassle. They are an expensive way to enter the hobby if you aren't sure what you want or how much you'll use it.
One of these days I'll splurge on a Prusa XL. That thing is cool as hell.