We want to purchase a 3d Printer or two, and are planning on using a grant for this. Unfortunately, we have been trying to reach Prusa about how to purchase one with US currency for over a month. They have never returned our call/ email/ chat. I did get in touch with them through chat, and it sounded like they were going to reach out to us, but they never did (the chat people did not actually have the ability to tell us how to purchase one).
At this point, I think we need to investigate other options. Does anyone have any suggestions?
We probably are looking at around 500 dollars, but could potentially go up. We would like the printer to be reliable and not take up too much space. Though I love tinkering (that is how I became a robotics mentor :), I feel any time we would use it, we would not want to have to do too much to get it working. Reliability is a must. If it came during build-season, we would not want to spend the time to put it together as we are a small team. We will probably be exporting from onshape to make the prints. I have no experience with 3d printers thus far. We will mostly print PLA or PLA+, but the ability to print using other filament types would be nice.
All of these reasons made the mini+ seem like the perfect machine, but it seems impossible to buy one with the grant constraints and their lack of response. Does anyone have any other recommendations?
My employer just went through the fiery hoops to order an MK3S+ from them. The communication is definitely less than perfect, especially in the aftermath of their Black Friday sale, but we were able to get all the information from them, get a quote, and get the order in. I hate to hand-wave it away with “keep trying!”, but that’s what worked for us.
We went for the MK3S+ because we had applications that called for the build volume, but if not everyone from mentors I trust on printing to Wirecutter is raving about the Mini. 1293 acquired an Ender 3 in a Woot sale over the summer for super cheap; we have low runtime on ours, but others seem to report issues that an FRC team can fix without too much specialized stuff (mostly, the parts). I wouldn’t classify it in the same tier of reliability as the Prusa, though.
My team got an Ender 3 v2. It doesn’t have quite the same level of “smart” features as the Mini+, but you can basically get two of them for the price of the Mini+. We got ours set up and working in a couple hours and had no real issues.
Edit: there are also the Creality CR-6 SE and Ender 3 S1 printers as “smarter” upgrades.
Yeah, I am in a love/hate relationship with Creality right now. Their low and mid range printers have great features, but sometimes some annoying hidden flaws.
We are using Ender 3’s and 5’s at work. With some upgrades and TLC, they work really well.
For the team, I am running a pair of Creality Sermoon D1’s and also a pair of Ender 6’s from MicroCenter in Cambridge (not toooo far from you). They have a range of options. Just be wary of their open box specials because they aren’t always repackaged well, and parts can be missing.
The D1s are really good unless you get one with a warped bed. (I am 1-for-2.) The 6 is more reliable in my experience, but it has a bowden tube as compared to the direct drive extruder on the D1. The enclosures are really important this time of year.
Both the 6 and the D1 have very sketchy SD card slots. I’ve managed to trash at least 2 of them trying to get an SD card to seat properly. The 6 also doesn’t have an external USB connection. There is one internal on the controller board, but google that before you use it, as you’ll want to cut the 5V line on your USB cable. This could be a factor if you want to use OctoPrint, or if you trash your SD card slot too.
We are printing with PLA+ (aka Tough PLA) and getting really good results on these machines.
I have had a lot of good success from my Creality CR6-SE. Some issues here and there, but honestly I have had more issues with a Prusa Mini than the CR6.
Sidewinder Artillery is what I would buy at $500. I’m a big fan of a volcano hot end for an FRC build season - you can print your more voluminous parts twice as fast with a 0.6 mm or 0.8 mm nozzle.
Thank you all for your suggestions. They help immensely. We cannot use paypal because, for some reason, the district is not able to use paypal or the credit card for international purchases.