Highest quality 3D print FDM printer - Beginner help me pick Prusa or alternative

[curious aardvark]

well I honestly think my twotrees sapphire pro2 is hands down the best built machine around.
It's a corexy setup, so really fast and precise.
The top is a solid sheet of 6mm aluminium.
The bed support rods are 12mm diameter and the base is made from a lot of 2.5mm sheet steel.

It has a few minor modifications that I think need doing.
But literally it's one printed bracket to convert to direct drive and the locking nuts for the bed levelling.
I also changed the print surface it came with for a sheet of dirt cheap self adhesive pei.
Not a necessity - (cough) unless you destroyed the original sheet adding the levelling knobs.

And a top mounted filament holder. I printed mine but you could make the same with a piece of wood and a short length of 10mm dowel and some cable ties.
And I can send you the new and improved firmware files - definitely essential.

For the money it's just insanely good value and built like a tank.

But once you've got the sapphire pro setup properly. It's totally bombproof, never needs the bed levelling, prints fast and accurate and looks great lol
https://3dprintboard.com/showthread....corexy-printer

have a look through that - the print volume is only 220x220x210.
Although I have printed a 280mm long thing on the diagonal :-)

If I had the space to put another one, i'd get one while they are still available.
As it is I've just unboxed my voxelab proxima resin printer and have not a clue where it's going to live.
Noisy damn thing (the proxima - the sapphire is completly silent in operation).

Lets put it this way - I'm already - before printing anything - considering upgrading the proxima to silent stepper driver lol
Between the cooling fans and the noisiest stepper motor I've ever heard - it's a noisy beast.

So other than the saffy.
Hmm, something enclosed with 300c nozzle would be good.
I'd like to play with polycarbonate - and at the moment I can't.

After an hour of wading through amazon, honestly the tenlog is the best I can find.
And bear in mind you don't have to use both extruders at once.

Should one die, the spare is already installed and ready to go :-)

I can't find a corexy with 300c hotend.
If necessary it would be a fairly simple upgrade (not mod :-) )

But as I've just started on my resin journey, it's not something I'll bother with.
I find that polyurethane can be used for pretty much all the high impact prints I do.

The prusa mini is a decent machine - but it is a bowden extruder and they just suck for flexible filaments, so that's limited you right there.

Here's one thing I use 'flexible' prints for: https://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1638371218
The thing about polyurethane is that you can print it as thin as 0.2mm for indestructible total floppiness.
Or as solid as my loght up dog 'balls' - which are not only virtually indesructible, but dog proof as well !

It's hands down my favourite material to work with, and you need a good direct drive extruder to do so.

For the dog carts and other prosthetics, it would be perfect for all sorts of parts.
stiff when needed, bendy when needed and tougher than a honey badger on steroids :-)

So if I was getting a first printer and had the money - I genuinely can't see anything else under $1000 I would boy.
The tenlog dl3 pro 600watt 300c nozzle, jst does it all.
And an enclosure would be pretty simple to make.
I'd probably use polystyrene sheet on the outside of cheap perspex.

And don't forget you can make all your own fixtures and fittings :-)

If I had real money - my all time favourite fdm printer is a Leapfrog Bolt. Probably not much change out of $10,000

My absolute win-the-lottery-first dream 3d printer is the stratasys j55 prime O-M-G !
It's like something out of science fiction.
Five printheads, using uv cured resins, but each layer is cured immediately after deposition.

So you get finished parts straight from the machine - as with fdm - but with resin quality, full colour, texturing and multimaterials in a single print.
Has a pretty big build volume and will sit on a small desk.
I mean just WOW !
The lottery win is necessary as the resins can run up to £600 a litre - so there's that :-)
But the whole stratasys polyjet setup just blew me away at the tct last year.

But back down to earth, fdm.
Value for money and zero upgrades needed.
I just cant see anything else to match the tenlog.

The flashforge pro2 idex is a nice bit of kit, but pretty small build volume.
But it is enclosed.
But no hi-temp nozzle - 265 is a as high as it goes, and that's no good for polycarbonate.
https://www.amazon.com/FlashForge-3D...s%2C170&sr=8-8

As a box ticking exercies, only the tenlog really does it all. And you can make an enclosure easy enough.
Bear in mind that you are only looking for 40-60c inside the enclosure.
It's the consistency of the temperature for the build volume rather than the absolute temperature.

For materials that shrink a lot, keeping the whole print the same temperature until it's finished is what you are aimng for.
You're not building an oven :-)

You build an over if you want to print PEEK ;-)

Having said all that - deltas are pretty cool lol
I have a biggish one and a mini one.

But I can't find one with a 300c hotend.
I have seen one with a direct drive extruder recently.
But but a clue where.

So again we're back to box ticking and the tenlog.

Also bear in mind you canput a different size nozzle on each extruder.
So maybe a .25 for real fine work and a 0.6 for rapid printing.

Or a 0.4 and a 0.8

It just adds a whole new layer of flexibility.

Which I have just realsed I should do to me click'n'print dual extruder.
DOH !
Never occurred to me before lol

This game is a constant learning curve :-)

Right then - once I've got the proxima started off tonight, I'll have a look at the knp nozzles :-)