3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: !functionalprint@kbin.social or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
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I am late to the party. I was in a position to try out something new so I picked 3d printing. My wife is VERY frugal, so even a cheap creality was a big ask.
I did a lot of research, and once it was determined that it was a reasonable plan. I settled on am ender 3 s1. It was inexpensive enough, yet out of the box, very well equipped. I wanted the s1 pro, but they weren't in stock at microcenter for their black Friday sale, so I got the s1, added a light bar, and picked up their pei sheet. I also bought the sprite pro kit, because it was a steal at $76.
I've since only added the sonic pad, and picked up a pex wham bam build plate, because I'm doing a could of gardening projects in petg, which can damage pei. I haven't needed the extra hotend yet. I am happy with the sonic pad, but would reconsider and look at the bigtreetech one, it want out when I got the sonic pad at launch. This is due to klipper and how creality kind of broke is license by not publishing their changes, etc.
I'll say this, I like printing. I haven't had a bad experience at all with it. And the S1 is a very good machine so far. Would I like a prusa? Of course I would, it's basically the standard, however, a grand, to me, would be an impossible get, so I had to do the best with what I could.
I would very highly recommend a few YouTube channels and checking out reviews on anything, before you buy.
My favorites are Aurora Tech Channel, Teaching Tech, Maker's Muse, and Modbot, but there are dozens more out there.
Take some time to look around. And buy whatever works. Certain people downplay the concept of modding, and tinkering, however, the more you know about your printer, through doing some things, the better you'll be at troubleshooting and resolving issues. My S1 runs nearly all day, every day, and once I learned some things about tuning it, which you'll have to do with ANY printer, it consistently prints good prints.
I recommend learning the settings in a slicer program, I use Cura for filament printing. That was the biggest hurdle for me so far, and once you kind of understand it, adjusting those settings will improve your printing experience.
Since this is a maker kind of thing, do expect failures. The single biggest issue I had starting out, was heat settings and, for some reason, my creality pei build plate. I had significant adhesion issues and most of the time I use the oem s1 build plate... Hence the reason I bought the wham bam systems lex plates.
Just get a printer that works for you, and have fun.
I'm in a similar boat where I couldn't justify getting the prusa but am super happy with Ender 3 S1. You will always have to dial in a new printer, and I have the S1 to such a state where its print and play for 90% of the objects that I'm printing.