kitnaht

Absolutely on the K1. Nobody should be buying it. Only time I ever recommend them -- is when referring to the K1 Max. And that's only when people want: A - To Print Fast, and B - Something larger than Bambu. But I'm starting to move toward suggesting the SV08 if I can see they are at least a little bit technical.

The normal K1? Forget it. Don't buy it.

Creality isn't a bad company, they're just hindered by the ignorant. The Ender 3, the baseline, old 8 bit model - was a perfectly fine machine if you knew what needed to be tight, and what didn't.

The new 3v3 SE is a wonderful machine at like $180 with direct drive, magnetic PEI bed, dual Z screws, and the works. It doesn't require all the knowledge that the old versions did. It's a perfectly fine beginner machine.

The problem with Creality is just that everyone bought one as an enthusiast, so they told all the non-enthusiasts it was a great machine, and without that same level of knowledge, those people fell HARD. In doing so, they returned and claimed that creality machines were garbage. But they really weren't. As far as bottom-of-the-barrel budget machines go, they were pretty alright.

The Elegoo Neptune 4's are pretty good. Avoid Anycubic FDM machines, but their Resin printers are good. Avoid Dremel; their nozzles are literally a smaller MK10 nozzle from 12 years ago with nichrome wire wrapped around it. They are unserviceable. Nozzle clogs, and you just buy a $35 replacement everything. Avoid XYZPrinting. New-gen Creality is good for beginners in this new higher-expectation world. Old-gen Creality, don't even bother unless you're getting it for <$50 and know enough to repair it yourself. (Old Gen is Ender 3, CR-10, Ender 3 v2, Ender 3 Pro, anything with "Neo" in it. Yes, Ender 3 is a version number. Yes, Creality is basically calling their printer the Ender v3 v2. Only Ender worth getting is the Ender 3, v3 (SE, KE, etc)) - If you have the budget, the Creality K1 Max is really the only alternative to a Bambu if you need a larger build size. Possibly the Sovol SV08 - but as much as I love the Klipper team, it is NOT the most user friendly on that front. If you like techy-stuff, the SV08 isn't as polished as a Bambu, but may be worth the price/size ratio.

Ignore people telling you to print carbon fiber, most of them are idiots. Glow in the dark is also destructive to your machine, avoid that unless it's DAS filament (who ball-grind their glow powder, so it's not abrasive to brass nozzles and other softer parts of your machine).

Sovol machines are a pretty good Prusa-alternative. They cloned the machines quite well, and are much cheaper.

Stick with PLA for everything until you find a situation in which it fails. Move up to PETG after that. Don't get caught up in the "TPU Trap". Great, you can print a phone case. What are you going to do with the REST of the roll? TPU doesn't work in remote-drive systems. YES, some of us who are headstrong can force it to work, but generally just accept that it doesn't, and if you MUST use TPU, make sure you're using it on a direct drive machine. If you have an enclosed machine, feel free to move up to ABS/ASA, HIPS, and others. Be prepared for the stinky. They do smell like burning styrofoam depending on the mfg.

Anyone selling you a used machine - you are adopting their problem. They wouldn't be selling it to you otherwise. There is ALWAYS a problem. Buy new when possible. Also, though I HATE Jeff Bezos, get your shit from Amazon. It's not their product, and if it's defective, they're not going to give you the run-around in replacing it. I've seen lots of people even told to keep the old/busted machine (great for spare parts later!). Amazon don't give a shiiiiiiiiit. This isn't possible for some machines: Bambu for example. They just don't work with resellers.

And don't go getting the cheapest bullshit filament you can buy. Stay above the...eh...$18/spool range. Lower than that, and you start getting some crusty shit.

If you have pets - good...fucking....luck. Pet dander, and all the shit they add to the air, is cancer to 3D printers. There is not a single pet owner that I have met where they aren't constantly servicing their machine due to clogs.

It's worth it if you like paying for headaches, living with outdated slicer software, and generally having to figure out how to achieve the things everyone else is doing with workarounds constantly.

I wouldn't take a Dremel 3D40 if someone paid ME to take it from them.

Looks like the fine folks here have you covered. This should be a pretty easy DIY to tackle. As others have said though, that glass can be incredibly heavy, and it's likely tempered, so don't hit the corners on anything or it'll basically explode into a million pieces.

Netanyahu would probably rather his people be actually hurt, so that it could bolster popularity of ongoing war.

When nothing happens, and security manages to intercept these things - people start questioning if they're actually in any kind of danger. Occasionally leaders have allowed things to happen to their citizens, in order to garner acceptance for going to war.

Been around quite a while, and I understand perfectly how enshittification works. However, this still uses open source technologies at its core, and you'll always be able to use those things. You can't enshittify the core feature of this machine, because it's built into it.

You can enshittify things that your customer doesn't own - services, and the like.

But you cannot enshittify something you don't control: The Slicer, etc.

The machine reads gcode, the machine spits out plastic. Reliably. There's no avenue for making that worse in order to extract money.

Their cloud services, their remote monitoring...all just silly bonuses. None of that shit matters, and none of that is why Bambu is the best right now. What makes them the best is the added sensors on their machine, and the attention they paid to the build, quality, and operation of the machine.

The slicer, is open source - alternatives already exist (Orca Slicer). And enshittification only starts once a platform has matured and fully taken over the market; and even then - doesn't always happen. It usually happens to US-based publicly traded companies. Which Bambu is not.

What you're spreading is FUD. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. You have no proof that these things will happen, and you're pearl clutching like Bambu will be the only ones who do it if/when that happens.

If you want to give up having the literal BEST VALUE, MOST ROBUST machine on the market out of some misplaced fear that doesn't even have any merit...so be it. Go for it.

Enshittification is for services. Things you don't own. This is a product that runs without any need to be connected to the internet. It will continue to run exactly like it is, exactly like you bought it. Sure, Bambu's cloud-connect, and all that garbage? Sure - they could change those things. But that's not what you buy a Bambu for.

In fact, ALL of the machines being suggested -- don't even have the services which could potentially be worsened in the future! So you're even giving up a whole set of features, on the chance that one day you may not have them? But are willing to buy a machine without them instead? This is absolutely the most absurd line of thought I've ever encountered.

Not only that, but Bambu has been working with these guys: https://github.com/X1Plus/X1Plus -- To allow an open source firmware on the X1C. You don't do that if you're planning on locking down the platform.

Bambu just has "future enshittification" written all over it.

I disagree. It's the reason why everyone else is scrambling soooo fucking hard to catch up with them. The A1 is absolutely a killer value for a machine. If anyone asks about multicolor, Bambu is the only one I've seen that's as reliable as it needs to be. I cannot recommend anyone else for multicolor.

There are quite literally not any machines out on the market that even come close to Bambu with their multitude of sensors. They've got tangle sensors, they've got programming that will detect blobs or disconnects of prints from the bed -- really - nobody comes close.

I literally run a 3D printer repair shop. Every model. They're one of the most frequently seen machines, despite being waaaaaay less popular than the Creality Ender 3. (And honestly, the 3v3 SE is a pretty solid machine now)

Their new line has gotten a lot better, but their support is still difficult to get the correct parts from when things go wrong. And I have to reiterate, their resin machines are amazing. I don't know how they get FDM machines so wrong, because their resin machines are great.

Elegoo Neptune 3/4 are great and a great value though if you desire speed and reliability.

Never, ever buy Anycubic FDM printers. They are the worst garbage on the market. I have the complete opposite opinion about their resin machines though. Their FDM machines have faulty wiring; as they chose the wrong materials for their ribbon cable assemblies; and any time I've asked them for a set of cables to replace a faulty one, they've sent me the wrong set of cables....up to 3x in a row.

It's bad enough, and they know it's bad enough that they actually removed a bunch of their FDM machines from their own slicer. Additionally, they use a modified version of Smoothieware, violating the license by not giving out the modifications they made to work with the screen.

I run a repair shop, and the Elegoo Neptune 4 is actually quite nice. The hot end is way easier to repair than the 3 and it's quite fast as well. Seconding this one. Downside is that they use a custom-length nozzle. But everyone seems to be doing that now.

The Sovol line of printers is good too, especially the SV-08 - It brings the voron into the world where it's not just a trophy printer that proves you can handle the worst of things.

Won't attend it now that it has nothing to do with RepRap.

Go download MythTV yourself. Shit's been available for decades. I used to use it with a capture card to timeshift/DVR cable television. The source is me. I used it. It was great. It auto-removed TV ads when it recorded your shows.

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Removing_Commercials#Automatically_removing_commercials