I have spent a bit of time looking around at 3D printers and if possible am wanting some direction.

Really I only need a small printer. It is only for occasional use and would prefer as inexpensive as possible but it has to do the job so will spend more if I have too.

Filament type. TPU or PLA or prefer a printer to do both or are these both rubbish and I should be looking at something else.

I am seeing a lot of the plans you can download are stl files where as some printers I have looked at are talking about gcode and others. Is this important or do the converters you can find work ok?

Are there good and bad modelling applications to use?

Any model suggestions would be most appreciated.

Creality Ender 3 for about $200 is what most people recommend for inexpensive 3D filament printer. And the Pro version for $300.

My friend has one and he loves it. There are a lot of community support, no manufacturer support.

https://intofpv.com/t-creality-ender-3

Thanks voodoo. I was looking at them at Banggood .

So for the scenario like I am in now where I need a spare arm as I have no carbon fiber spares left as I am an awesome crasher would the PLA filament do the trick whilst I wait for the proper spares to some in?

I understand that for camera mounts etc I should be using TPU filament.

Yes, most accessories parts for quad are printed with TPU. including camera mounts. As for PLA arms, there might not be enough stiffness there. The excessive vibrations can drive your gyro crazy causing all kind of problems. I am just speculating, having tried PLA replacement arms myself.

I have the Monoprice MP Select Mini.  It's quite the little workhorse and prints TPU like a champ!

I think the bottom line is that if you are prepared to spend some time modding and upgrading your printer then one of the "budget" printers such as the Ender 3 or the one that RENO has is a great option. A lot of people seem to end up doing a lot of mods to the Ender 3 to get it printing exactly the way they want it to. The alternative is something like the Prusa I3 which required no modding/upgrading (unless you really want to), but you end up paying a big premium for one of those at around 4x the price of an Ender 3.

One thing to be aware of with the Ender 3 is that the current versions come with an "upgraded" 1.1.4 mainboard, however this is an inferior version to the "1.1.4" board that you can buy separately as an upgrade board (I have no idea why Creality gave both boards the same version number because it just causes total confusion). The pre-installed 1.1.4 board has inferior (and noisier) A4988 stepper motor drivers compared to the separately purchased 1.1.4 board which has the much better "silent" TMC2208 stepper drivers. There is also no bootloader on the pre-installed 1.1.4 board either which makes upgrading the firmware a problem, and some people have reported that trying to install a bootloader via ICSP has ended in failure which means you are then stuck with non-upgradeable firmware. The separately purchased 1.1.4 board has a pre-installed bootloader making firmware upgrades easy.

Wow the Prusa I3 is a much higher price. I think for what I need it for and for how often it will be used i'll stick with the more budget conscience printers as mentioned.

Thanks for all the help

There is a 1.1.5 board out for the Ender 3, 3 Pro, and Ender 5 now. Just adding that tidbit.

Deal

(28-Jun-2019, 12:59 PM)Deal-E-O Wrote: There is a 1.1.5 board out for the Ender 3, 3 Pro, and Ender 5 now.  Just adding that tidbit.

So if you buy a new Ender 3, does it now come with a 1.1.5 board, and if so, do you get the same 1.1.5 board as the one you can buy as a separate upgrade, or dies the same mess of confusion still exist with the 1.1.5 board as with the 1.1.4 board?

The 1.1.4 board hasn't even been out that long. If I'd just bought one of the 1.1.5 boards then I would be pissed to find out that it had already been superseded by yet another newer revision.

Truthfully, most of the mods we do to budget printers aren't actually necessary. We just do them because.....well.............we can. We don't need LED light bars, we don't need webcam/arduino setups for offsite viewing, better feeders, MK8 hotends, it's just part of the hobby.

Check out the Anet A8. Tried and tested chinese kit that can be upgraded to a very high performing printer. Prusa style printer, has lots of great mods and upgrades. It can be challenging to upgrade it a whole bunch, but there's TONS of support for it on thingiverse and other 3d printing sites (all3dp, etc).

FYI, ender 3 on sale with us stock for approx 157 usd with code 3d7. The only real upgrade you need is a pei build surface for about 15$. This surface saves you a lot of headaches with bed adhesion. Other than that, it’s a great printer out of the box. I have quite a few upgrades to mine but the pei surface was the best one.