capably8341

Sounds like you've done your research.

A friend of mine has a Qidi X-Max 3, so I got to play around with it quite a bit. It is a beast! And apparently their support is top notch. I'm definitely going to look at Qidi next time I'm in the market.

All that said, the Q1 is not the same class of printer as the X-Max 3. It seems like it makes some compromises to hit the price it does. If you are looking for amazing build quality or extremely large prints, you probably want to save up for something like their Plus4. But if you don't care about those things, or don't want to spend more, the Q1 seems like a great choice.

As far as the polydrier goes, it seems good, but expensive. I've had a good experience just using my printer's heatbed to dry filament and using vacuum bags with redried dessicants. The bags are like $1-2 each, so even if 1/4 of them are leaky, it's still way cheaper than dry boxes. And I just collect the dessicants from my new filament spools and redry them in the microwave.

I haven't printed nylon, but I know you can get the cereal box dryboxes for like $7 each. If you plan to have tons of rolls of nylon, then it may be worth getting a full drying system, but for only a few rolls, I'd stick to cereal boxes.

If I were in your situation, I'd cheap out on the storage and put that extra ~$100 towards a Plus4 or some cool filament.

Glad to hear you're able to keep using it! No reason to get rid of good hardware. I hope other people do the same.

I’d prefer that lesson to be “more careful” and not “these people are snobs”

This sums it up perfectly! Don't make consumer-friendly synonymous with "snobs."

That's a very fair point. I also think the massive amount of outrage shows that many people didn't know the full extent of what they were signing up for. So I think is varies from person to person.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Prusa specifically say you don't need to keep the CORE One doesn't need to be open because of its temperature control?

I've been reading the other comments, and while people are encouraging, their comments seem a bit too "you HAVE to learn CAD." You definitely don't NEED to know CAD. I made basic parts and modifications in the slicer for nearly a year after I started printing, and it worked really well. However, if you are considering learning a full CAD program, I have two pieces of advice.

First pertains to if you are working with functional parts. Then you are talking about a parametric CAD program (fusion, onshape, FreeCAD, etc.). In this case, I think it's worth learning for you, and it's not as hard as it seems. You say you have SketchUp experience, so I'm assuming you have decent spatial reasoning. I know someone with no tech literacy nor programming experience who learned a CAD program very well in less than a month of following tutorials in her free time. Just give it a try, and it's a skill you'll be happy to have.

If you are working with cosmetic parts like miniatures and helmets, then you might need to use something like Blender. Admittedly, that can be even more challenging than the other CAD programs I mentioned. However, if you spend a few hours learning some basics from YouTube, you should be able to do fundemental things like fixing holes.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your printing endeavors!

Thanks for replying! I like your suggestions.

In addition

• They have filed some controversial/anti-innovative patents.

• Their printers phone home with encrypted information. Last I checked, there were speculated security and privacy issues with it, though someone should correct me if this was resolved.

• They only open source their slicer because of the GPL licence, but they don't open source anything else (firmware, hardware, etc).

Again, I just recommend people look into these things before they buy a printer. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions :)

As other people have mentioned, Prusa and Bambu make the most reliable printers on the market. The plus side to Bambu is the price. They are definitely cheaper than prusa printers.

However, I would make sure to be aware of the controversies surrounding Bambu. This is not a deal breaker for many people, but it wouldn't be right not to at least take a glance at them. Especially considering you are on Lemmy.

This is where Prusa shines. They have not had nearly the same amount of controversies. Their hardware, firmware, and software are all open source. They also have amazing customer support. As others said, a used Prusa can be found within your price range.

This is just something to know of. I know a lot of people who are happy with both brands, and you can't really go wrong either way. I just think this is another thing to consider.

Admittedly, I bought it used. However, it had very little use and was a prebuilt model. I'd be surprised if that has much to do with the issues I've had since I didn't have any issues the first month or so.

The issues I've had have been all over the place from fans breaking, to having to reflash the RasPi I put in it, to it digging the nozzle into the build plate and ruining it. At one point, the print lifted off the build plate and clumped up to the point I had to replace most of the hotend, although that could happen on any printer I guess.

I think I'm leaning towards a Voron kit. Self-sourcing sounds awful.

I didn't realize they have that big of a sale going on. However, I still don't want to spend that kind of money with Creality until it's been in many peoples hands for a while. I haven't heard the best things about them as a brand overall.

I'm curious to hear if you find a solution to this as you play with it more. I think some people are able to make it work with some setups, so I'm curious if something makes the Prusa different. If there isn't a way to make it work, I think this has to be crossed off my list of options.