this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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3DPrinting

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I have found a creality ender 3 pro on facebook marketplace for $75, would this be a good 3d printer at a good price for my first time?

I probably wouldn’t be printing too often, but I have a number of ideas for things that I’d like to try making.

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[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ender printers are good if you want your hobby to revolve around "constantly tweaking and managing and redesigning the printer". A bit of a hot take maybe, and I'm not just throwing shade, some people legitimately enjoy that aspect of the hobby. It's a fun printer to tinker with, low stakes, and sometimes the challenge of getting perfect prints out of the cheapest jankiest available 3d printer is a goal unto itself and developing that skill can be very rewarding and educational. But if your goal is to actually reliably and repeatedly print 3d objects in a variety of filaments, in my experience the Ender is an aggravating and limited waste of space.

Personally, I want the 3d printer to mostly "just work" and I enjoy the part design and 3d modelling and then actually seeing how those parts perform in real life, and for that, I want something that is reliable and easy and works across a broad range of parts and filaments with very little effort needed on my part.

I spent the moderate number of bucks required to buy a Prusa MK3S, which is just as open and expandable and tweakable as the Ender, the difference is you don't have to. The options are all there, but as designed, out of the box, it just works. It prints, without any significant errors or issues almost every time, it's not a constant fight to get a single thing printed. It's a well designed machine, the company stands behind it and provides everything you need to upgrade it and there's a huge community building addons if you want them. But you don't need them. And that's the nice part.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 weeks ago

Not really a hot take, especially with a used cheap Ender 3.

They are great if you want your hobby to be 3d printers. If you instead want a tool to do 3d printing, you should get something else.