Should I just wait another year or two?
Should I just wait another year or two?
I've wanted to get into 3d printing for a while now and have been checking out the prusa mk4 and the bambu lab x1.
The bambu looks amazing in all aspects besides repairability and offline printing, with the latter one looking like a real deal breaker. It seems like all the more advanced features need a connection to the cloud, which I really don't like.
On the other hand we have the prusa which seems to be running really rushed software still missing a lot of features that the hardware should be able to support and the price looks like way worse value compared to the stuff you get with the bambu. At least it's repairable and no cloud bullshit.
Should I just come back in a year and hope that the mk4 software has gotten better or the bambu doesn't require internet for all the cool stuff?
Edit: Just woke up and I want to thank everyone in this thread for the quality replies! I'll look into 3d modeling first and if the prusa doesn't anymore have janky alpha input shaping 2-3 months from now I'll go with that, otherwise I'll have to look for alternatives. Since I'd be running prints throughout the day while I'm not at home, I'd want something more reliable than an ender 3.
Edit 2: I just found out about the Bambu p1s, I might just get that one.
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If I waited until printers were completely fool-proof, I would never have gotten one. Instead I jumped in 6yrs ago and I've printed so many useful things and a lot of toys. Most rooms in my house have at least one printed item in them because of how useful it is.
Yes I've had my share of failures and have had to rebuild a printer a ton of times while learning how it worked, but I also learned a lot of new skills.
- Soldering used to be scary and now it's no big deal.
- I can de-pin connectors and build new adapters instead of spending $8-10 for someone to ship me one from Amazon.
- With TinkerCAD I can knock out roughly designed parts that are ready to go in a few hours instead of waiting days/weeks
From learning all of those skills I've swapped the motherboard and rewired my first printer to have bed levelling and be whisper quiet, 3d printed an RC car, designed parts for my vehicles, completely overhauled my sim racing setup, the list goes on.
If you want to get in to it and have the money to get started, go for it. I started with something like an Ender 3 and still use it today. You don't need an expensive machine if you want to learn how to maintain it. It all depends on what your goal is with 3d printing.