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Best Budget 3D Printer: 7 Great Printers at a Price You’ll Love – CNET [CNET]
Did you know that a large amount of creative Americans refer to themselves as “makers” (about 135 million — if you’re interested in stats)? A major portion of them have tapped into the awesomeness of 3D printers. That means a lot of amazing things have been physically brought into the world through a simple machine. What kind of awesome things, you ask? With a 3D printer, you can build small statues to give as gifts or cultivate epic pieces of costume armor. The possibilities are practically limitless. In fact, you can even tap into your creative side by opening your own Etsy store. Equipping yourself with a few printers will get you well on your way to turning your hobby into a revenue stream.
Using a 3D printer used to feel completely out of reach. You can find solid printers available for under $300, making it easier than ever to step into the “maker” realm. There is a catch: These budget machines usually need to be tweaked and tooled to get it just right. You’ll save money, but it’s a rough-and-tumble way to get started. The best budget 3D printers have a healthy balance between usability and cost, so that’s what we’re looking at in this list.
Budget 3D printing is a category that is growing fast. For my money, the best you can buy right now is the Anycubic Kobra 2. It has enough upgraded features to make it an incredibly useful machine. Its price was recently slashed to $209 from its previously firm-set price range of $250-$280. Having this much quality in a printer that costs so little makes it the perfect budget 3D printer.
These budget 3D printers all cost under $500 (though prices can drift a bit month to month), and some are better suited to beginners than others. Our list of picks for the best 3D printer overall covers a much wider range of choices, but these are excellent for getting started — or for buying several at once. If you are thinking of creating a print farm, then buying several Anycubic Kobra 2‘s is an excellent way to get started.
Testing 3D printers is an in-depth process. Printers often don’t use the same materials, or even the same process to create models. I test SLA 3D printers that use resin and light to print, and FDM printers that melt plastic onto a plate. Each has a unique methodology. Core qualifiers I look at include:
- Hardware quality
- Ease of setup
- Bundled software
- Appearance and accuracy of prints
- Repairability
- Company and community support
A key test print, representing the (now old) CNET logo, is used to assess how a printer bridges gaps, creates accurate shapes and deals with overhangs. It even has little towers to help measure how well the 3D printer deals with temperature ranges.
When testing speed, we slice the model using the standard slicer the machine is shipped with on its standard settings, then compare the real-world duration of the print to the statement completion time on the slicer. 3D printers often use different slicers, and those slicers can vary wildly on what they believe the completion time to be.
We then use PrusaSlicer to determine how much material the print should use and divide that number by the real-world time it took to print to give us a more accurate number for the speed in millimeters per second (mm/s) the printer can run at.
Every build plate is supposed to heat up to a certain temperature so we use the InfiRay thermal imaging camera for Android to check how well they do. We set the build plate to 60 degrees Celsius — the most used temperature for build plates — waited 5 minutes for the temperature to stabilize, and then measured it in six separate locations. We then took the average temperature to see how close the 3D printer got to the advertised temperature.
Testing resin requires different criteria, so I use the Ameralabs standard test: printing out a small resin model that looks like a tiny town. This helps determine how accurate the printer is, how it deals with small parts and how well the UV exposure works at different points in the model.
Many other anecdotal test prints, using different 3D models, are also run on each printer to test the longevity of the parts and how well the machine copes with various shapes.
For the other criteria, I researched the company to see how well it responds to support queries from customers and how easy it is to order replacement parts and install them yourself. Kits (printers that come only semi-assembled) are judged by how long and difficult the assembly process is and how clear the instructions are.
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