What would be your "perfect" entry level printer?

I'm just curious as to what people's idea would be of a "perfect" entry level printer in terms of cost and features. Entry level here meaning people with no experience, no history with 3d printing that don't really know if they want to fully dive into the hobby, or kids wanting to enter the hobby but have no prior experience.

Price is a big one I'm keeping in mind, even a couple of hundred bucks for the cheapest chinese kits is a lot of money to some people. Especially if they don't know whether they will keep going with the hobby, or don't have their own source of income and rely on their parents.

Feature wise I feel bed leveling is a must, it saves a ton of hassle and can be implemented using a microswitch which you'd otherwise be using for the z axis anyway so I don't see it adding a noticeable cost if any cost at all. Thing's like LCDs and SD card readers (from experience) aren't crucial on a first printer. It's a feature people miss after they've used them and had to go back to not having them, but don't seem too bothered by when they've been printing tethered the whole time. One controversial point I'd like to bring up is that I don't think entry level (again, look at my definition of entry level above) printers should have a heated bed. The extra danger from getting burned and the power/wiring associated with them doesn't seem appropriate for the target demographic.

I like the concept behind the 101HERO, kodama obsidian and the STARTT. The 101HERO made a bunch of mistakes (that i'm hoping to avoid), the obsidian has gone up in price since the kickstarter and I think the STARTT will be going up in price as well soon since they can't really make much profit selling it that cheap and that's not sustainable. I really like what these printers are trying to do by making things cheap and accessible and want to try my hand at it too.

From currently available and nearly available machines, it's got to be the monoprice mini delta.
auto everything, small print volume - but for a first printer, you don't necessarily want something big.
It has a tiny footprint, usb, wireless and sd card input. Weighs 4lb, so far only good reviews. No building, no kit, quality prints but capable of fast prints.
And retail price will be under $200. Well in the states anyway.
looks to be around £180 in the uk, which is well over $200. But we expect that over here now.

For the money it;s a really impressive bit of kit. Removeable print bed, the bed has the microswitchs for bed levelling, which is clever.
colour touchscreen.

And yes i will be getting one as soon as they are available over here. For portability and also for really fine prints. I've got a .25 hardened steel nozzle i;m hoping will fit it.
and it's small enough to live on top of the k200, no will take up zero desk space.

Pretty much both an ideal first machine, and cheap add on for anyone else who either wants a small hi-res machine or something you can throw into a backpack and take to your mates or for demos etc

Should be possible to hook it up to a 12 volt battery as well. Been looking at some hi capacity li-ions.

But yep, out of the hundreds of machines i've seen, this comes closest to hitting all the specs for a first machine.

Yes it does have a heated bed. But you'll be printing pla based filaments and thst's 50c. Which is enough to work as a hand warmer, but can't burn you.
Fir me heated bed is essential for a first machine as it makes bed adhesion much much better, which helps remove the biggest hassle of 3d printing, either getting a printer to stick, or removing a stuck too much print.

That obsidian is a nice looking piece of kit too.
The $249 even has a camera.

the 101 hero is similiar sized to the monoprice. But lacks all the cool bits: stel frame, wifi, bed, levelling etc.

I did think about making a mini delta. The frame could be printed in 2 pieces, wheels rather than rails means you need to buy a lot fewer pieces.

But I'd still like the arm32 board and touchscreen.

And by the time I'd costed it up and then factored in time to design and troubleshoot it all - I just decided to buy the monoprice one when it's available lol

My big delta is quite different, you can't buy anything eveb close to comparable for 4-5x what it'll cost me in money.

But going bacl to a very first machine for total beginners, the monoprice and obsidian tick all the boxes.

Yeah I've heard about the monoprice delta. It looks like a sweet bit of kit, especially for the price. The extra features it has like the wifi, color touch screen and so on are pretty amazing at that price point, I'm kind of surprised they can afford to sell it at that low cost. This is speaking as someone who's looked into sourcing components direct from china at bulk pricing. All the components+shipping(eeep, fully assembled and all metal) would cost pretty close to $200 but they're done it. Does it compromise on the motors or something, I can't find a good look of the motors on their website but it looks like they've gone all in.
Out of curiosity how big will your custom delta be?

the big bastard has got a 350mm print area and will have over 1 metre build height.
Working on the fact that the uprights are 1.5metres and the shafts will be around 400mm and angled and obviously I lose a little where the uprights go into the corner pieces, I reckon it should be around 110cm max build height.

I figure I can print a full size, small child in one go or a one piece plastic guitar.
I suspect that it's actually too much height, and maybe 600mm might have made more sense, but I've got the bits now :-)
I have been running a few stupidly large virtual prints through s3d, and for anything - even hollow items - much over 700mm you will need more than 1kg of filament.
Which - like many parts of this project - brings me back to the filament joiner I started to make earlier in the year and had completely forgotten about lol
So that's back on the agenda.

Plus the plan is to sell and deliver and setup, to small business who want a large print volume but who don't have much cash. Nobody below the several hundred thousand price range actually does delivery and setup. I reckon I can get it all in for under £3'000 and still clear a pretty decent profit.
So far I've been astonished at the quality of parts I've got for bugger all money.
I didn't really think the hotend through and I'm not that keen on the e3d j end mounting setup. But hey I've got all of £6 invested in that (after talking to e3d at the tct show, it turns out it's not genuine - lol), so might simply switch to a volcano/tornado ? hotend as long as it's got screw mounts not just a cylinder that needs gripping.
Autowhiz uses those and that's a guy who's built a hi-end gaming computer into his car - simply because he could.
If he's using a part, then it's as good as it gets.

The vibration thing is going to be interesting with the flying extruder. As while the extruder is not on the effector it is still attached to the carriages.
tevon just use timing belt to suspend theirs while wasp use silicon tubing and the thing constantly shakes like elvis on meth with parkinsons disease.
But they still have fast printing and clean prints - so that's currently a suck-it-and-see issue.

I'll probably start with timing belt and see how it goes.
The drive belts will need to be really tight, thinking I might need to upgrade to reinforced. But we'll see once it's fully built and everything is moving around I'll have a much better idea what needs changing.

If you look around there is a review where they took the mini delta to bits, looks like standard nema 17's to me.

And bear in mind that monoprice are currently the worlds no 1 3d printer retailer, so their bulk prices are not comparable to anyone elses.

If you say $3 for a nema 17, $10 for a board, 10$ for the screen and maybe $15 for the frame and $10 for everything else. And that's probably too high.
You can make the whole thing for around $60.
Definitely under $100.
And as long as they work, they are just going to fly off the shelves.
Their little mini side build plate machine is already the world's best selling 3d printer - I reckon sales of the delta will go past that at a gallop.

It's just such a cute, neat bit of kit. Had the monoprice woman not been so attentive at the tct, there's a chance it would have gone into my bag :-)
She'd probably been fending off would be thieves all day.

This review shows the motors. Given the size of the base they look like standard 17's to me. https://hackaday.com/2017/08/21/mono...-delta-review/

Very good review.
Though it looks like these people don't actually learn. It will probably need a ptfe tube inserted. Given how short the bowden tube is. This should be an ideal machine for flexibles, but not with a break between the bowden tube and the hotend.
That's just something no printer should ever have. Other than that, no negatives in the review.

Now they just need to get them out in the uk so I can buy myself a christmas present lol
I've actually got two jars of loose change that will probably cover 90% of the cost once I've spent three hours putting it into money bags and taking it to the bank :-)

At the end of this build I will still have 5 nema 14 motors left over and a cheapo board. So could print a mini delta frame, use wheels instead of linear bearings.
We'll see, I could really do with a decent sized laser engraver, so might look at that instead. nema 14's would be fine for that.

From what I've seen the cheapest 32 bit boards (i.e. those that have wifi, can do color touch screens etc) are all at least $30+ even in bulk, and the motion components would be more than $10. I'd put their costs a bit closer to, maybe just shy of $100 not including shipping.

For your big delta, what are you using for the diagonal rods and the joints there? at 350mm they'll have quite a bit of bend/wobble to them. I've seen quite a few printers (including I think the part daddy, a big delta) tension the pairs of rods together to remove slack. Also what do you mean by reinforced? Almost all belts used on printers are fiberglass or similar reinforced otherwise they would stretch a fair bit. On a printer that size I'd just go with wider belts, maybe nema 23 motors.

Btw, for a printer that size, something like an e3d titan+pancake probably wouldn't contribute much to the overall moving mass and would save you the hassle of a bowden tube/flying extruder (the idea looks and sounds cool but you're right, the way they shake can be nerve racking to watch).

pancake ?
Okay a flat motor. looking around they have the same sort of torque and ampage as the nema 14s - might still try using one of those.

rods are carbon fibre 8mm diameter. pretty rigid. Going for magnetic coupling, so weight of effector is an issue - well up to a point. I can probably boost the magnets if necessarywith some smaller ones in the actual shaft.

I like the idea of magnets, makes for easy change if i add a laser engraver and easy maintenance. And it looks cool :-)
Makes it easy to mess about with different extruder/hotend setups.

Monoprice won't pay anything like $30 for their boards. Hell they've probably built their own factory to make them. They use the same arm32 board in the mini select 2.
When you're buying these things in the tens of thousands, and are actually in china and chinese - your prices will bear no resemblance to anything listed on a website aimed at the rest of the world.

The bowden for the flying extruder is a few inches long. Not an issue.

I meant long bowden and flying extruder as two seperate issues (depending on if you picked flying extruder or standard bowden). As for the pancake motors, they have the advantage of being thinner than comparable nema14s and usually run cooler, not sure about weight.

I like the magnetic couplers, they are a very simple and tidy solution, plus they are pretty much lash free especially when compared to ball or u joints.

Something to note about carbon fibre though, isn't it supposed to flex well along the direction of the fibres(lengthways of the rod)? I could be entirely wrong here, just vaguely remeber reading about flex in carbon fibre in another situation where it was a desirable feature.

probably arrow shafts.
These are really stiff, I haven't snapped one but I've put a fair bit of force into trying to bend one and there is no noticeable flex in them at all.
The thin metal rods most people use are really bendy in comparison.

I've basically gone through all the deltas I've seen in recent years and nicked all the best bits :-)

I'm in the same boat as Trakyan. (noob shopping for 1st 3d printer) The MP delta printer looks nice at a great price. Does anyone have any thoughts on the Anycubic i3 mega-ultrabase?

lol trakyan is talking about marketing a new printer - he's got loads :-)

the anycubic looks like a wanhao i3 duplicator plus clone.

cheaper though.
Have you looked at the tevo tornado ?
If I was buying a cheap i3 kit - that's currently the one I'd go for.

XYZprinting is having a Black Friday deal on the da Vinci miniMaker on the B&H website: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/searc...op+Nav-Search=

The da Vinci miniMaker is $169.95 and it has free shipping and no tax. The miniMaker is PLA only, has a level bed, auto-calibration for the nozzle, and a non-heated bed. B&H also sells their filament for $22. I was actually going to post on this today.

101hero review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAsCCetO9ss
for $49 you get what you pay for lol

I would scan the Internet / E-Bay for "3D Printer DIY kit Aluminum"
With an DIY kit Aluminum you will learn while assembling and still have a sturdy frame to ensure a precision print.

I purchased Used Hictop 3DP11/12 Reprap Prusa i3's, which could not be assembled by the previous owners, and Saved about 50% from new.
My purchases turned out better than expected, though it very well could have turned out the other way.

I never said the 101hero was good, just that i liked the idea of a cheap and accessible printer. The biggest let down are the motors, i think the rest is usable to get decent prints.

As for a first printer, I'd go for something with a big community to help you when you're getting started. If you want cheap go for a chinese kit, but from a reasonably high profile supplier like tevo (gathered some hate lately), monoprice, he3d etc rather than a random aliexpress or ebay listing. The price hike is negligible ($10-20 if anything) but youre more likely to get replacement parts if it arrived dead or broken. Monoprice printers in particular seem beginner friendly and well made.

plus buying random second hand kits/printers from ebay isn't exactly something you'd do as a complete first time user, which is the actual point of this thread.

Looking for printers for total beginners.

I mostly started this thread because I'm almost done with my current printer design, and am in the process of deciding if there are any features I can strip away or should add. This is a cheap printer with the goal of being simple, so I'm looking to other good cheap printers for ideas.

The philosophy I'm going for with this printer is simple and minimal. Nothing is there unless it has to be. No extra idlers to make it pretty or route something someway or other, no adjustment screws that don't need to be there, nothing. Apart from standard hardware (motors, hotend, etc.) I've managed to use only one type and length of bolt, its matching nut, washer and bearing as the only hardware for the printer. My only dilemma is M8 vs M5. M8 is more robust (harder to bend bolts etc.) and 608 bearings are the most widely available. M5 is lighter (marginally less moving mass, cheaper to ship if I sell kits) and would allow me to make a dual drive extruder without adding any new bolt types (M8 wouldn't allow this), plus the bearings are thinner so i can use shorter bolts. I'm debating if the dual drive extruder is something I should include, it sort of goes against the simple and minimal philosophy of the printer, on the other hand it's cool.