I bought a 3D printer.

I've been watching the tech for a while (and seeing some people doing interesting things) and decided that when we move some time in the spring that I would get one. To avoid claims from my long-suffering wife that I am "too impulsive" when it comes to buying things I did my research.

Quick Introduction

At a high level, I am getting a 3D printer that uses filaments made of all kinds of different materials (mostly plastic) to create objects by melting the filaments at a high temperature and then placing them onto a heated plate by pushing it through a nozzle.

It builds up the objects in layers that are millimeters thick (one print I am building has over 370 layers!). Most printers have a thing called a tool head that contains some kind of controller board, something that can heat up the filament, an extruder that pulls the unheated filament into it, and a nozzle.

The controller then directs the tool head to move around and extrude the heated filament onto a base plate that is heated. The nozzle can get extremely hot (200C+) and the base plate is hot enough to burn your skin if you touch it by accident (60C+). Don't worry, I haven't burnt myself.

What Types Did I Look At

Before I get into this some more, I wish to point out that 3D printing is still in the very early days and there are no "plug-and-play" solutions. There is a lot to learn and understand and I have been trying to move slowly and make as few mistakes as possible. It's easy to get excited and make all sorts of plans. Slow and steady will win this hobby for me.

When it comes to many things, I try to follow an old bit of real estate advice: by the cheapest house in the most expensive neighbourhood. While I do not have an unlimited budget for this hobby, I could spend a good amount of money so I avoided any "budget" options and targeted a specific type of printer.

I first decided I wanted to get a CoreXY 3D printer due to its ability to print things in three dimensions at high speed. Speed, accuracy, and compactness were what I was after.

What were my options:

Bambu Lab

Bambu Lab makes printers based on another design and focuses on the user experience. Their printers look really nice, they come fully assembled, and are ready to go in 30 minutes or less upon removal from the box.

Their biggest criticisms are that they are based in China (xenophobia never takes a day off) and often require use of their cloud services. Not great from a privacy perspective. They make two lines of CoreXY printers -- the X1 series and the P1 series.

If choosing them I would go with the X1 series.

Prusa

Prusa Research is an EU-based company that focusses on support and reliability. They offer an upgrade path for almost every model via kits. They are more into functionality than form, so their options are not as visually appealing as Bambu Labs' offerings.

They are more expensive because they do not make the printers in China, using their own printer farms consisting of their own equipment to manufacture any printable parts.

They can come fully assembled and ready to go out of the box or they can send you a kit you put together for a little cheaper. Like Bambu Labs, they say you can be up and running in 30 minutes or less.

They have two CoreXY offerings -- the Prusa XL or the Prusa Core One.

I was going to pre-order the Prusa Core One until...

VORON

...I stumbled upon the Linux of 3D printers. The VORON project was intended to let people create a 3D printer with very few compromises using off-the-shelf parts and a DIY attitude. So it became a specification for others to follow as they built out a 3D printer and could customize it in ways that you could never do with Bambu or Prusa.

This mirrors the Linux experience in many ways.

The biggest drawback was that you would build one of these printers by purchasing kits and often 3D printing parts for it yourself. Building one from scratch was estimated to take 48 to 72 HOURS. Over and over again the advice I saw was "this should be your second 3D printer, not your first." There was no way my long-suffering wife would let me have multiple ones.

Then I stumbled across the Sovol SV08. A VORON printer...that is 90% assembled.

Now, I know that I have no skills in printing and are not great at assembling things but it is never too late to try refine those skills to get better at them.

Open source? Active community? Upgradeable?

I could not resist. It was on sale for a deep discount on Amazon here in Canada so I pulled the trigger, much to my wife's disappointment. Sorry Claire, it was on sale.

It came on Boxing Day, I went slowly and took 3 hours to put it together. I successfully did a test print and now I was ready to start doing other things!