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Could someone explain to me what you get from paying more for a 3D printer like this one instead of a "basic" model? I have a Ender 3 V2 with self-leveling bed

by belval 4y ago

Could someone explain to me what you get from paying more for a 3D printer like this one instead of a "basic" model? I have a Ender 3 V2 with self-leveling bed (without self-leveling it's not that great) and I use it a lot, enough to justify buying a better $1k+ printer but it's not clear what I get from spending that much money on it. Is it printing speed, better materials, or something else entirely?

eropple 4y ago
In 2023: not a ton. Maybe some better repeatability. You're likely to have fewer out-of-the-box problems; they spend a lot on quality control. If you're just interested in the hobby, the Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro is, for my money, a fantastic entrypoint that you can get for under $250. (I own the larger version, the Plus, which has a bigger bed and turns the fans off when not printing; it's sub-$350.) There's also the Sovol SV06 (and its larger Plus variant) in the same ballpark, though they're having some significant QC problems these days. It's also in the $200-$250 range. I have one of these too and it's pretty nice, but I have a first-run one before the QC problems started to rear up. The Prusa stuff is absolutely better made than the Sovol stuff--though the Elegoo stuff is remarkably high-quality, especially for the price--but frankly it is emphatically not four times better. The delta shrinks further if (and in this crowd, maybe when) you install the Klipper firmware to replace the stock Marlin stuff; Prusa's custom Marlin builds are better than the competition, but Klipper beats it all hollow, and the performance benefits of Klipper on the SV06 and the Neptune 3 Pro/Plus are huge when it comes to faster acceleration and thus faster printing.
- letshin 4y ago
  What QC issues have there been so far? The YouTune reviews have been positive so curious to find out more before I decide to buy or not.
njovin 4y ago
I'm not an expert but I do own an MK3S+, from what I can tell: - OOTB ready-to-print is a big one. There's a bit of a learning curve to calibrating everything on the MK3S+. It took me a few days to get mine dialed in and I'm not one of those people that's looking for perfect prints, I just needed it to mostly work. - Touch-screen + wifi + remote printing saves on setup: no SD card needed. I added an OctoPi to mine to achieve similar but that takes some tinkering and the OctoPi performance is spotty. - They're claiming a 70% decrease in print times
jdietrich 4y ago
Reliability and speed. An Ender 3 will produce good prints if it's well tuned, but there are a lot of quirks to the design (mostly as a result of cost-cutting) that can cause problems out of the box and will cause problems over time. Prusa printers are far from perfect, but they're trusted by a lot of print farm operators to run 24/7 with very little attention. Modern CoreXY printers like the Bambu Lab or Voron machines are crazy fast compared to an Ender 3, without any real compromise in print quality or reliability. That isn't necessarily a big deal for hobbyists, but it's very useful when you're iterating on a design. For users who care about print speed, the issue is generally latency rather than throughput. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFdfYn0DTUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFdfYn0DTUk

by belval 4y ago

eropple 4y ago

In 2023: not a ton. Maybe some better repeatability. You're likely to have fewer out-of-the-box problems; they spend a lot on quality control. If you're just interested in the hobby, the Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro is, for my money, a fantastic entrypoint that you can get for under $250. (I own the larger version, the Plus, which has a bigger bed and turns the fans off when not printing; it's sub-$350.) There's also the Sovol SV06 (and its larger Plus variant) in the same ballpark, though they're having some significant QC problems these days. It's also in the $200-$250 range. I have one of these too and it's pretty nice, but I have a first-run one before the QC problems started to rear up. The Prusa stuff is absolutely better made than the Sovol stuff--though the Elegoo stuff is remarkably high-quality, especially for the price--but frankly it is emphatically not four times better. The delta shrinks further if (and in this crowd, maybe when) you install the Klipper firmware to replace the stock Marlin stuff; Prusa's custom Marlin builds are better than the competition, but Klipper beats it all hollow, and the performance benefits of Klipper on the SV06 and the Neptune 3 Pro/Plus are huge when it comes to faster acceleration and thus faster printing.

letshin 4y ago
What QC issues have there been so far? The YouTune reviews have been positive so curious to find out more before I decide to buy or not.

njovin 4y ago

I'm not an expert but I do own an MK3S+, from what I can tell: - OOTB ready-to-print is a big one. There's a bit of a learning curve to calibrating everything on the MK3S+. It took me a few days to get mine dialed in and I'm not one of those people that's looking for perfect prints, I just needed it to mostly work. - Touch-screen + wifi + remote printing saves on setup: no SD card needed. I added an OctoPi to mine to achieve similar but that takes some tinkering and the OctoPi performance is spotty. - They're claiming a 70% decrease in print times

jdietrich 4y ago

Reliability and speed. An Ender 3 will produce good prints if it's well tuned, but there are a lot of quirks to the design (mostly as a result of cost-cutting) that can cause problems out of the box and will cause problems over time. Prusa printers are far from perfect, but they're trusted by a lot of print farm operators to run 24/7 with very little attention. Modern CoreXY printers like the Bambu Lab or Voron machines are crazy fast compared to an Ender 3, without any real compromise in print quality or reliability. That isn't necessarily a big deal for hobbyists, but it's very useful when you're iterating on a design. For users who care about print speed, the issue is generally latency rather than throughput. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFdfYn0DTUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFdfYn0DTUk