Well, I guess it's finally time. What's a decent <$500 printer that doesn't require too much fuss or fiddle?
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I've been happy with my two Qidi printers so far. My current X-Max 3 is probably a bit out of your range, but their Q2 is precisely $499 USD at the moment.
I have a friend who was into 3D printing since before it was cool. He says quality stock for his printers is the problem, as it is more expensive than the printers themselves. You gotta feed them, just not after midnight. Just a low effort FYI
I've found this to be decreasingly the case as time goes on, thankfully. Of course you can pay any amount of money if you want to for filaments made of fancy engineering materials and subsequently drive yourself nuts trying to get them to print on your machine. But if you're just sticking to basic PLA and even PETG I'm continually astonished at the good results I achieve even using cheap and highly suspicious spools straight from China.
Printing in ABS is about as fancy as I bother to go on a semi-regular basis (the Rockhopper is designed around it, in fact) and I have a couple of spools of glass fiber filled Nylon and even a roll of polycarbonate lying around for a rainy day, you know, just in case. But I haven't found a compelling application for them yet. For the majority of what most people print, PLA is just fine and also far and away the easiest to work with.
You used "froody", no notes.
He really knows where his towel is
May it be said of all of us....
...i think he meant 'hoopy'; that's what my brain sassed...
Only a dude can be a hoopy frood.
A nice update!
Just FYI, your first link is b0rked for me. I'm assuming b0rked for others too but you never can tell.
I fixed it, thanks for letting me know.
I don't have a 3d printer but I really want a black and white one of these just for the questions I'd get to field alone
Not sure where you are in the world but a lot of public libraries have 3D printers now that you can use.
Hmmm interesting lemme look into it


