I'm looking to buy a 3D Printer at $500 or under, what are your suggestions?

[Yidimu3D]

Well, there is LCD 3D printer may help you to avoid problems when printing for it has cover.
I could show you Yidimu machine Panther LCD printer as attached picture and more details if you hope to make clearly view.
It is recommended for dental and jewelry cartoon dolls application for smooth appearance on printing and fine-detail processing.
Whatever, $500 is good to choose your printer on Amazon or Aliexpress with coupons to save more.
Good luck!

Hi, my budget is up to $500 and I live in the USA.

I don't have a preference between kit or prebuilt, and I have a very basic level of experience with electronic maintenance and construction (I have built computers, cleaned them, diagnosed hardware issues, and built a PiGRRL 2).

My printer will mostly be used for figurines and for designing plastic solutions to problems.

An enclosure is needed for my printer as we have four cats in this house who would probably hurt themselves on an open printer, and because ABS looks useful.

I was looking at the Maker Ultimate because it already has an enclosure, and safety-wise, the only mod I'd need to apply would be an ABS fan to improve its cooling ability. It's $480, which also meets my budget. I don't know anything else about it though, and I don't know what other sub-$500 printers exist that also have an enclosure.

Thanks in advance!