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.
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.