Basically title, but I can provide some information.

I’m looking to spend no more than $300 or so. I’m not well versed in different filaments (I’ll be honest, I know nothing) or really anything about 3d printing, but I want to be able to print cup holders for someone I know whose vehicle has none, I imagine heat resistance and strength would be important there. I also do robotics now and would like to be able to make my own small robot chassis and parts. I’m also a Linux user and like FOSS, which I believe is fairly compatible with 3d printing, so I would like to find a printer that doesn’t make me use proprietary software and that I can use with Fedora Linux without too much hassle. I know I’m new to this, and I know I’m in other hobbies where people post things like: “I want to spend no more than 6 dollars to get artificial superintelligence running on an Arduino Nano,” so I hope this isn’t that, and sorry if it is. Thanks in advance.

  • dom@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I can’t speak to the Linux piece, but for that price point ender 3 pro is hard to beat. Or the Bambu mini but im unsure if you need to use their software or if you can use any slicer. I’d imagine any slicer to be honest

    • AliasVortex@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      I highly recommend Orca Slicer, it’s forked from bamboo slicer (which is in turn forked from Prusa), so has their modern UI/ layout and natively, as well as natively support bamboo printers. If Bamboo’s not your jam, it also plays very nicely with Klipper. As an added bonus, it regularly gets new features added or ported from the other slicers.

    • Eldritch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Bambu has their printer software available for all major platform. For Linux I think it was in the Arch extras or aur. I have used it from Linux and it has generally been a good experience.

      If someone is an fdm newbie. The A1 series is hard to go wrong. Creality is great too. But it takes a lot more tweaking to get it where the bambu is out of the box. BIL got an ender last year and not had a good experience. I got an A1 this year and it’s been a blast from the start. These are all anecdotes. But personal experience to consider.

    • HumanPerson@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      The Ender 3 Pro looks good, but I am a bit worried about the DIY aspect of it. I normally like DIY stuff, but since I am new to 3d printing, I want to isolate the number of things I have to learn. Is it too hard to set up, and does everything you need (apart from filament) come in the box or will I need to get other things?

      • ServeTheBeam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        I have an Ender 3 Pro and spend more time with maintenance than actually using it. I’ve stopped using it because it isn’t worth my time. I just bought a Bambu A1 and am hoping for an easier time. It just came today so I haven’t set it up yet.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        The Ender and creality are good systems. But as you said they do require a lot of tinkering. My very technically inclined brother-in-law got an Ender last year. And had a very bad time with it because of all the faffing about you had to do. Conversely this year I got an a1. And it’s more or less been point and click. There’s plenty of other technical stuff to get into with it. Such as filament types feeds and speeds and heats. Supports and infills. Which it also helps out quite a bit with. But there’s more than enough to learn just picking it up