I made my own 3D printer in 2014 (E3D, Core-XY, oversized Nema motors, …), but it has been sitting in the garage for too long and it’s a bit bulky, finicky and so on. A good first try IMO back when crappy chinese ones was 700-800€ on AliBaba… But because my kid asked me if we couldn’t buy one, and this one specifically, I checked it out, it’s ~300€ which I thought was way too cheap for something reliable but things have changed in the 3D print world it seems, and I haven’t kept up.
So I’m mostly looking for something reliable (or easily fixable, I do have printed a bunch of stuff so I know how things work, at least I have had all the basics problems :-) ) and in a box, no need for anything fancy.
I read that the hotend isn’t interchangeable, or you go third-party, but I will mostly (only?) use PLA which is not very abrasive.
I also read that you can use other slicers, which is nice. Future proofing is nice.
Thoughts / recommendations ?
Thanks!
Edit: Kid just sent me the " 3D Bambu Lab P1S" too, but I think I don’t like the closed echo system of the Bambu… is it a legit concern ?
I will never recommend an Elegoo printer after the last two I had. Both broke in unique ways and I got no support for either one. It took MicroCenter going above and beyond to resolve the issue with one by doing a return well past the return period. The manager was horrified when I gave her the extremely long and exhausting story of dealing with their awful support. The other printer is just a pile of parts now.
I picked up an Anycubic Kobra S1 and its been pretty great so far, though my bar is pretty low at this point, TBH.
That being said, they do use their own version of OrcaSlicer, but it works well enough for me, and you can flash some additional firmware into the printer to open it up more.
I have had a similar horrible time with their support. My machine died in August, took weeks for parts to arrive. Finally in January they offered me a refurbished replacement machine. Replacement machine was in significantly worse shape than the nearly brand new machine I shipped them back.
The replacement machine had a frozen bed as they neglected to install the bed retaining screws when they shipped it. I was able to unstuck the bed, machine is now requires a z-offset of 0.9 to even operate properly. Heat bed is very warped on the left hand corner. I suspect this is due the absolute garbage job they did on the packing for shipping.
Support is sending me parts but I have zero faith now in elegoo as a company.
God that sucks. I’m sorry you have to deal with that. They truly are racing to the bottom.
To give another perspective, I had a main board go out on my Neptune 3 right after a year of owning it, and they sent me a new one for free 🤷🏽♂️ the resin printer I have from them has seen much less use but has been rock solid every time I’ve used it.
The mainboards are unfortunately the common thread with all the issues I have with their printers. My Neptune 3’S mainboard has a well documented fault that they refuse to admit to and would not replace.
The Mars 5 Ultra that MC took back had a faulty board, and the replacement board was also faulty. It was three months of arguing, pics, video, and escalations before I told MC the story and they took pity on me and returned it. Elegoos concession was to send me the smallest bottle of their cheapest resin for a printer I no longer had.