Since you’re a beginner, I’d recommend the Prusa Mini, but the Creality Ender 3 is probably the best budget option at the moment.

definitely the creality ender 3

A secondhand Prusa MK3.

Buying new, Sovol SV06 are decent entry-level printers. Currently US$259

But as everyone's been saying, the money you save by buying cheap will be made up in the future. Either by spending $ replacing/upgrading parts, or spending time having to do more adjustments to have prints come out properly.

Neptune 2 has been a solid $100 printer. Super clean prints and it’s been pretty low maintenance for me.

What's the best cheap 3d printer?

What's the best Purchase Advice Megathread

The one that the guy on the 2nd hand market is selling because he couldn't figure out how to setup the printer.

ender 3s are some of the best budget printers. They aren’t the cheapest and you’ll need help from someone else if that’s what you want, however they are a good price and very reliable. They’re one of the most common 3d printers so you won’t have any problems with support, they also have tons of upgrades you can do down the line whenever you need.

I’d get something like the ender 3 neo because it has auto bed leveling which is a real pain otherwise, 215$ on amazon. the regular ender 3 is 170$ on amazon and you can always upgrade it to have auto bed leveling and other features later.

Bambu P1s. I was up and printing within 20minutes and zero prior knowledge on 3dprinters.

It really depends on the budget, what projects you want to print, and your tolerance for self teaching/tinkering.

The Bambu A1 or A1 mini is probably the easiest entry point into 3d printing, but it has limits in what materials it will print well, build volume (though fine for probability 90% of prints), and concerns around security and being locked into a closed ecosystem.

Prusa printers are very well built, largely "plug and play", and don't have the same security concerns as Bambu. But, they are expensive, lack certain modern features, and all but the CORE 1 have the same material limitations of the A1.

Most other manufacturers are still more in the DIY realm when it comes to setting up your printer and calibrating print profiles. There are excellent machines out there built around specific use cases, but you're going to feel the full learning curve of 3d printing with those machines and deal with varying levels of customer support from mediocre to none.

Personally, if I buy another printer it would likely be an SV08 or an idea former belt printer (or build a printer from scratch). But I'm also very conformable maintaining, modifying, and tuning printers at this point.

Elegoo Neptune 3 pro works out of the box decent build plate size and is only 160$

Anycubic k1 combo. Not proprietary, and cost half of a bambu x1

Flashforge Adventurer 5M pro (knockoff bambu printer) is fantastic for beginners. I started off with an Ender 3 years ago, and that had a very steep learning curve which was helpful to gain a good bit of knowledge through troubleshooting and upgrading my Ender, but after I made the switch my my Flashforge printer, I’m not looking back. It cost me just under $400, and it’s better bang for your buck than a Bambu printer, and is similar quality to it. It’s a very capable printer, self-leveling, live camera feed, wifi enabled, and it’s fully enclosed. With the Orca App, you can even monitor your prints when away from home. Also, if a print fails, it has memory enabled allowing you to recover the STL file and pickup where it left off.

I've had an Ender, an AnyCubic and a Bambu. I'm only telling people to get Bambu from now on. My biggest complaint when I started was that I was spending most of my time fiddling with adjustments and micro-adjusting knobs and springs on every print, only for it to still look like crap. I got a Bambu earlier this year and it just works. There are probably others that also work, but I stopped here.

Define beginner! For instance, myself about 5 months ago only started looking into 3D printing and meanwhile I've built my own Voron 2.4 350mm. And now I'm keeping it busy 24h a day printing multiboards for my own garage! I've also printed some other functional parts around the house. Oh, and all of this out of PETG and ABS, and not PLA!

Why a Voron? Well, while looking at all those Bambu and Creality and Prusa reviews, I've noticed they all had something in common: at least a Voron quietly running somewhere in a corner.

Probably the Creality Ender-3 V3 or FlashForge Adventurer 5M

What do you want to do.

Do you want a tool to make items for a different hobby, eg miniatures, drone accessories, storage organisation.

Or Do you want a hobby in itself (calibrating and optimising the printer)

If the former: I would suggest a BambuLab FDM machine initially. Unless you want very fine detail for miniatures. Then some form of SLA/DLP resin printer if you can arrange the climate controlled and ventilated space required for safe operation (resins are largely very toxic and must be handled with appropriate PPE, ventilation and care.).

If the latter. The world is your oyster.

The Centauri Carbon is probably the best value you can buy right now and it's almost turnkey

What do you mean by beginner?

Beginner friendly: prusa

Beginner printer that will cause you a bunch of frustration and make you want to upgrade: ender

Ender 3 is great. Built size is ~220x220mm, if you are printing smaller things it’s perfect

You need to specify three things:

Size (printable area requirements)

Budget (max dollars you want to spend)

Type (SLA, FDM, or the few other, non-budget kinds)

Without these 3 things, no one can help you.

Define budget, and what type of business. I'm curious

Ender 3's are cheap and are decent machines. Expect a lot of tinkering though.

You didn't say your budget but I'm still going to say the Bambu A1 combo. If you want to spend a little more the Bambu P1S. IMO, they are the best on the market.

This is a good place to start your search https://mattermanifest.com/3dprinters

Generally I would recommend:

1. Start cheaper to see if you really like it before investing more ($200 - $300)
2. Go for a recent printer model from a well known brand (Ender 3, A1)
3. Make sure it has auto bed leveling, most recent ones do
4. Get an enclosure if you want stronger materials, and get a Larger printer for wearables

No budget FDM printer: Prusa XL with 5 tool heads.

Reasonable with actual budget: Bambu X1C combo.

Still no interest in FDM printing and literally no budget limits: metal SLS machine.

Budget is no option? Prusa XL 5 tool head. There is nothing else out there that can rival it on multi material and multi color printing and has a massive build plate. Prusa has excellent support and if you live in the US, you’ll be able to get support / repairs in the states now that the printed solid partnership is finally getting off the ground.

Bambu P1P, no budget then X1C.

I used to spend more time fixing and modding my printers than actually printing. Now I print.

Anything from Bambu lab, they have good printers at every price range. The p1s might be good for you!

I’ve only had the chance to use Markforged composite printers in the past, but I find that they make them dead easy to operate. Where they fall flat is maintenance and repairability, which is something that has always been a pain. There are relatively few slicing parameters (for the composites), and the most complicated thing you’re doing is adding the continuous fibers. That seems like a bad thing at first, but if you’re using it you’re going to be using for strong parts, which makes the pre-tuned profiles make sense.

What is the budget? since what printer to recommend is highly dependent on budget, and in the 3D printing world, you definitely get what you pay for.

Thank you for your contribution, however this post has been removed as this question is best suited to our monthly Purchase Advice Thread, which you can find in the top navigation bar, as a stickied post when sorting by hot or you can view the whole Purchase Advice Collection here. Be aware that Collections on Reddit only currently work in Desktop View.

Good luck in your purchase!

I’d recommend a Sovol SV06

Check for used MK3S or Minis for sale around you and online

the ender 3 was a nice cheap and reliable workhorse for a while, but I hear it's getting outclassed now, the Sovol SV06 sounds quite nice

Get a cheap second hand printer off of offer up or something like that. Once you get into it you’ll know what you want to spend some real money on.

You don't want a cheap printer, do you?

Fast. Cheap. Correct. Pick two.

I dont want to pay for Quality, but i want quality🤷

Anycubic kobra Neo $170 with auto bed leveling have over 100 hours on it and works great