The only other printer I have any experience with is an XYZ davinci JR that I bought for my 11yr old Daughter. I literally took it out of the box, plugged it in, installed filament and software on her PC and printed a part within 15 min.

She has printed a bunch of stuff on it and I haven't had to help her with anything and it only cost $340 shipped through amazon.

It's downfalls are.

1. Small print area.

2. No heated bed so you can only print PLA.

3. You have to use XYZ filament because they have RFID tags on the spools. For me this works well because it configures all the print settings so my Daughter can just put the filament in and not have to mess with anything.

But XYZ has several other printers that have a bit larger print area and can print PLA and ABS. There is still the limitation of having to use XYZ filament because of the RFID tags on the filament but I think you can reflash the printer to work around this. There is a guy on youtube that prints with Davinci printers and I am sure there are a ton of other videos on there from others as well.

https://www.youtube.com/user/beginnerelectronics/videos

Here is an amazon search for XYZ printers

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?...qid=1442598535

If I had it to do over again I would have probably bought one of the XYZ printers to start with and used it to build another larger printer.

But that being said there are a bunch of different printers out there so be sure you do some research.

Quote Originally Posted by tfast500 View Post
Thanks Chad for your response. I don't want to get off topic from MakerFarm, but do you have any other printer recommendations.

I must say I do expect there to be a learning curve, and some tinkering along the way. That is not a huge detour for me as I am pretty hands on, however I do not want this to burn me out or be so much of a struggle I wont enjoy it.

Thanks again for your feedback I am wondering if I should stay in the 10" range with this and play it "safer"