Looking for a good printer

[devuljuice]

Trying my first full suit build. Opted to go with a 3-D printed build as I’m still working on my foamsmithing skills. Any advice for what I should be looking for in a printer, filament, and anything else I should know going forward? Thanks!

 

[PlanetAlexander]

Trying my first full suit build. Opted to go with a 3-D printed build as I’m still working on my foamsmithing skills. Any advice for what I should be looking for in a printer, filament, and anything else I should know going forward? Thanks!

Welcome to the 405th!

Take a look through the thread below to get an idea on what printers us here use and what sort of things we've printed on them. It'll give you a good starting point.

What's Your Printer?

This question always seems to come up a decent bit so I figured "why not just make a thread?" Post your printer(s) you use for props and costumes and if you like them! This is to help newer people figure out what printer they may want for starting their costuming adventure Printer Name Bed...

www.405th.com

 

[Nimitz]

Been using 3D printers since 2021 for several cosplay builds and your choice of 3D printer can be really be important to have a good experience. My opinion is that in addition to your budget it comes down to your skill set? Are you good with electro mechanical stuff? Do you like to tinker? Do you like to understand of the guts of stuff works or are you just interested in being an operator of a piece of equipment and want it to just work when you turn it on , kinda like using a hammer? I'm definitely in this latter camp which is why my first printer was/is a PRUSA Mark 3 i3S, arguably the 3D printers others are judged by. It simply works with no tinkering or upgrades required. The down side is you pay for that. The assembly by PRUSA printer goes for $899. There are plenty of less expensive printers but I feel they all have "issues" I don't want to deal with. I need my printer to be like a hammer in my shop. This is why when I needed a large build volume printer I recently purchased a PRUSA XL.

As for filament I have been buying nothing but Hatchbox PLA for everything that I build. Superb quality control and reasonably priced at $24.99/1kg spool on Amazon.

You will get as many opinions as there are printers to buy if you do enough research but one way to wade through it all is to look at what printers people who have "3D printer farms" are using. These people have 10-20 printers going full time as they are selling 3D printed stuff on sites like Etsy. You will see a lot of PRUSAs - there's a hint in there somewhere ...