I think it’s finally time to upgrade from my Ender 3, and the market has… grown substantially. I’m a bit out of my depth.
Definitely looking at a coreXY, and definitely prefer a multi-color system (multi-material really). My budget is around $600, but that’s a bit flexible.
The Elegoo Centurion Carbon 2 looks attractive, and it’s on sale. But I’ve heard good things about multi-head systems, particularly when it comes to waste from purging. Granted, that stretches my budget a bit.
What’s the move? It seems like so many of the options (coughcoughBambu) have pretty gross anti-consumer practices. Are there any good options out there?
Update: Alright, I pulled the trigger on a Snapmaker U1. It seems like it’s going to be the Ender 3 of tool changers: the open source darling that becomes the de facto standard for the mod community.
If I was still printing a bunch for TTRPGs then yeah I’d probably agree. I feel like to justify a $900 printer I’d have to start selling prints. I could do that, but then I’m turning a hobby into a side hustle, and then I’ve gotta find customers, and meet deadlines, and source models that are high enough quality to sell without legal trouble.
Idk, maybe. It does look nice.
Edit: Ugh, I went down the Full Spectrum rabbit hole. If I’m not mistaken, translucent filament on a 4 head printer can handle basically any color. The U1 is becoming more and more attractive. My poor wallet.
Dooooo eeet! Let the filament flow through you! I am your father.
Seriously though, I have 6 printers spanning Bambu, Anycubic, creality etc. 4 of them are multi-color and none of them can touch the u1 on pretty much every metric.
The U1 is fast, prints amazing, has open source firmware and minimizes filament waste by a ridiculous amount.
The Kobra 3 Max is my most used printer, but it only gets more use because it’s a large format printer and I’ve been printing some large art piece stuff(if it wasn’t for the constant filament clogs with the crappy filament cutter system it would be great).
Don’t even touch my p1S anymore unless I need to print a bunch of stuff at the same time.
(Other printers are used for more industrial prints so multicolor isn’t something I care about with them)
It is done. My fate is sealed. My bank account, reduced to atoms.
While you wait for shipment, start printing an ikea lid mount for the u1. It’s not necessary but it’s great to keep dust out. I did the beaverworks because it was first but I don’t recommend it because there are better ones now. Beaverworks version has unnecessary extra material and needs toyou to unplug the hot extruders to install.
Yeah I saw that, though I’ll probably just wait and print on the U1 when it gets here.
I’d suggest starting now because you are going to want to have your U1 busy with multi color prints. Multi color tpu is amazing. I made a mini chess set with tpu and the pieces feel fantastic.
U1 tip: make sure all the plastic trim is snapped in inside the printer, especially behind the toolheads. It took me a month to figure out why my toolheads sometimes didn’t park. It looked fine but with more pressure I got a click and haven’t had problems since.
My throughput isn’t as high as it used to be, I’m not constantly printing, plus I’ll be too busy to do much for the next month or so. That should only be what, 10-15 hours of print time tops?
But from atoms, greatness!
And then that greatness reduced once again to atoms when I inevitably get a full color 3d scanner to start making perfect miniatures of everything. Luckily I’ve probably got a few years before there’s a decent markerless scanner in the hobbyist price range, so I have time to recover.
Yea, all the hobby level ones suck horribly unless you set everything up with perfect lighting, sacrifice a goat to the elder gods, and get lucky.
Uh oh, the Revopoint POP 4 is actually looking pretty decent, at $643 if I pledge soon. Uh oh.
I can second the U1. I got it after my modded Ender 5 that I fitted with a two-head toolchanger.
It’s night and day. The U1 isn’t quite as fast in real life as the marketing material says, but it’s still much faster than the Ender 5. It prints perfectly every time. Since I had it I had a single print failure, and that was because I didn’t clean the bed propperly and the print detatched from the fingerprinty bed. Other than that, every single print worked flawlessly.
The toolchanger also saves so much waste compared to a filament changer.
I know it’s beyond your stated budget, but I wouldn’t want anything else (except maybe a Prusa XL, but that thing is ridiculously expensive).
Btw, the U1 is rather open sourcy, and there’s a custom firmware that improves a lot of issues with the OG firmware.