Edit 2: I purchased the Bambu A1 mini. If I regret it, there will be more chances in later years. Haha. Maybe by then I can work with resin and make the really fun minis. Thank everyone who responded for your advice and help.
Edit: I am leaning against resin printing due to the lack of sufficient ventilation in my current work space and the potential for injuring my cats. I also do not plan to do exclusively miniatures; they were just the thing I was most excited for when making this post.
I looked around for a pinned thread or purchase wiki type thing, but didn't see one. I apologize if this is the wrong place.
After visiting a family member, I have decided that 3D printing has finally gotten affordable enough for me to maybe add to my list of hobbies. My primary use cases would be making miniatures (no particular scale necessary, as I just like to paint them at the moment), making parts for other hobbies (including cross stitch), and just generally making gifts and fun knick nacks. My budget is no more than $250 for the machine itself. I have not-insignificant computer experience, and some training in CAD programs.
Several seem to be on sale in the US for Father's Day (today), and I was wondering if anybody had some advice or suggestions on some specific ones.
- Creality Ender-3 V2 is what my family member has had for a while now and enjoyed, and less than $200 is very nice. It does seem to be dated at this point, and Creality support seems to be lacking.
- There's also the Neo of the above for the same price, but I am honestly having a hard time pinpointing the difference.
- Sovol SV06 seems to be a common recommendation for the price range, but I've heard similarly negative things about their support, especially on Amazon (although I no longer trust Amazon reviews very much).
- Flashforge Adventurer 5M appears to be on a significant sale on their official eBay (240 USD), but I have only really seen it recommended in almost spammy manners, which seems like either excitement for the sale or an ad campaign.
Any help you can give is greatly appreciated, even if it's just not getting into the hobby at this price point.
Creality has never had anything decent for support for their Printers.
The support comes from the community., and third party retailers
Ender 3 is a very competent platform, and capable of printing a lot of stuff from large functional prints down to wargaming miniatures (I have a Ender 3 Pro thats fairly modded, and I've printed stuff from both extremes of the scale), If you are going to be printing a variety of things then I think its a solid buy for you, but you will have to deal with figuring out the right nozzle size, slicer settings, model position and supports for it, to get smaller prints to come out well (Remember, FDMs best detail resolution is on the left/right/front/back, it doesnt have as much detail in the up and down, so you have to position detailed models accordingly). And even at the finest details you might have layer lines that show up once you throw paint on, but they typically only really stand out if you hold it up right to your face.. On a wargaming table, for example, no one would most likely ever notice.
If your prints are mostly going to be small, and detail oriented, then I would suggest a Resin printer if you can swing it. It will give you significantly higher detail, and if you print multiple at once, save a lot of time as well. Cause with resin, it doesnt matter if you are printing one or a dozen at once, it still the same speed as one. Unlike FDM.
as a last piece of advice.. A good 3d printer is expensive. Whether you pay that price up front in cash, Or you pay it in time tinkering and experimenting, Is up to you. Ender 3 is cheap cash wise, but You'll spend some time tinkering, and dialing, to get the best out of it.
I looked into resin briefly, but I don't think my work area would be able to be ventilated enough for it to be safe from what I have seen.
I don't mind tinkering, as long as I can find the info to help do so somewhere.
Fair, you do need some basic safety gear in addition to being able to exhaust it out a window, namely gloves, goggles and maybe a respirator, which might blow your budget if you dont already have any of that (and anything gloves/goggles used for resin should stay with the resin printer to avoid cross contamination).
But I did want to mention it since your main example is Minis, which is very detail oriented.
I'm not sure I agree here - I think the resin printer might not be a good entry point, but I'm curious to hear what others think. I've heard resin printers require special ventilation and the photo-resin is carcinogenic. Once dialed in, an FDM can do pretty great for detailed parts. Especially with a smaller nozzle. So I'm not convinced jumping straight into a resin printer is wise.
I used my Ender 3 for a few years making miniatures, and they came out pretty great. Of course, then I tried switching to a larger nozzle and I still haven't managed to get it running... but that's my fault.
You do need some special precautions with resin, namely a well ventilated area (or exhaust it out a window or something), gloves, goggles and maybe a respirator depending on resin type. But basic safey practices mitigate any of the health concerns or dangers.
Resin is a fine entry point if what they are printing is not only very detailed, but something they want to print multiples of. FDM can do amazing detail, but Resin can do it far better, and with less time investment. But as I said in my original post, FDM can do good enough detail with time and dialing if they are gonna be printing things besides detail oriented miniatures as well.