I’m happy with my slightly modded Ender 3 Pro, but if I ever upgrade the Snapmaker U1 looks nice. I’ll only buy from a company that supports open source firmware. Bambu is trash, unfortunately every 3D printing related YouTuber seems to have happily taken a sponsorship from them so they are everywhere now. I hate it.
I’ve been interested in getting a 3d printer for a while now but am not deep into what’s out there, does the ender 3 pro require any cloud or services that I can’t run locally to function?
Edit: same question for the snapmaker U1.
Also, where do you source your fillament from? Any other ongoing maintenance requirements (material-wise)?
I want a 3d printer, not some new relationship with a corporation.
Ender 3 Pro is a completely offline printer. It has a microSD slot and a USB port, that’s it. No network connectivoty at all. It runs Marlin firmware which is a long-standing Arduino-based open source 3D printer firmware. It’s highly customizable and upgradable. I added a CR Touch bed probe to mine and rebuilt the firmware to enable the unified bed leveling features. It’s not the most user friendly but it’s a decent, cheap platform, fully open source, and puts out decent prints.
You can also run klipper on them if you want network connectivity. Granted you need a raspberry pi to run klipper so there is that.
After running klipper on my Ratrigs I can’t even consider Marlin anymore. Modifying a config file and restarting is less painful than having to compile and flash a bin for every modification or update.
As another 3d printing noob, why would I want my 3d printer connected and be in the mercy of some company? Feels like this dependency makes it so you don’t truly own the product.
Klipper wouldn’t do that at all on its own. It basically just uses an external computer to run the printer, rather than purely using the printers microcontroller. So you can connect to the computer remotely/over wifi and control the printer if you set it up to do so. It also makes it easier to add extra stuff like cameras, heaters, power switches, etc. too since it all runs through that computer and knows what the printer is doing.
I’ve come from an ender 3 pro to a Bambu P1S with AMS. As others have said the Bambu environment makes it “apple-like” (for better or for worse) to print. Set up, to print is maybe an hour? You spend the majority of your time with the printer actually printing. Which is why everyone (I included) are so upset about how Bambu is handling this.
Meanwhile the ender you spend the majority of your time getting the printer settings right, adding mods, adding firmware, trying new slicers, bed leveling, etc. I spent so much more time tinkering with my ender than printing that i just gave up printing altogether.
If you want to just print things it’s really hard to beat a Bambu. If you want to tinker and actually learn what 3d printing does and how it works, other printers like an Ender is the way to go.
I’m happy with my slightly modded Ender 3 Pro, but if I ever upgrade the Snapmaker U1 looks nice. I’ll only buy from a company that supports open source firmware. Bambu is trash, unfortunately every 3D printing related YouTuber seems to have happily taken a sponsorship from them so they are everywhere now. I hate it.
I’ve been interested in getting a 3d printer for a while now but am not deep into what’s out there, does the ender 3 pro require any cloud or services that I can’t run locally to function?
Edit: same question for the snapmaker U1.
Also, where do you source your fillament from? Any other ongoing maintenance requirements (material-wise)?
I want a 3d printer, not some new relationship with a corporation.
Ender 3 Pro is a completely offline printer. It has a microSD slot and a USB port, that’s it. No network connectivoty at all. It runs Marlin firmware which is a long-standing Arduino-based open source 3D printer firmware. It’s highly customizable and upgradable. I added a CR Touch bed probe to mine and rebuilt the firmware to enable the unified bed leveling features. It’s not the most user friendly but it’s a decent, cheap platform, fully open source, and puts out decent prints.
You can also run klipper on them if you want network connectivity. Granted you need a raspberry pi to run klipper so there is that.
After running klipper on my Ratrigs I can’t even consider Marlin anymore. Modifying a config file and restarting is less painful than having to compile and flash a bin for every modification or update.
As another 3d printing noob, why would I want my 3d printer connected and be in the mercy of some company? Feels like this dependency makes it so you don’t truly own the product.
Klipper wouldn’t do that at all on its own. It basically just uses an external computer to run the printer, rather than purely using the printers microcontroller. So you can connect to the computer remotely/over wifi and control the printer if you set it up to do so. It also makes it easier to add extra stuff like cameras, heaters, power switches, etc. too since it all runs through that computer and knows what the printer is doing.
I’ve come from an ender 3 pro to a Bambu P1S with AMS. As others have said the Bambu environment makes it “apple-like” (for better or for worse) to print. Set up, to print is maybe an hour? You spend the majority of your time with the printer actually printing. Which is why everyone (I included) are so upset about how Bambu is handling this.
Meanwhile the ender you spend the majority of your time getting the printer settings right, adding mods, adding firmware, trying new slicers, bed leveling, etc. I spent so much more time tinkering with my ender than printing that i just gave up printing altogether.
If you want to just print things it’s really hard to beat a Bambu. If you want to tinker and actually learn what 3d printing does and how it works, other printers like an Ender is the way to go.