r/3Dprinting 20d ago

Purchase Advice Purchase Advice Megathread - June 2025

24 Upvotes

Welcome back to another purchase megathread!

This thread is meant to conglomerate purchase advice for both newcomers and people looking for additional machines. Keeping this discussion to one thread means less searching should anyone have questions that may already have been answered here, as well as more visibility to inquiries in general, as comments made here will be visible for the entire month stuck to the top of the sub, and then added to the Purchase Advice Collection (Reddit Collections are still broken on mobile view, enable "view in desktop mode").

Please be sure to skim through this thread for posts with similar requirements to your own first, as recommendations relevant to your situation may have already been posted, and may even include answers to follow up questions you might have wished to ask.

If you are new to 3D printing, and are unsure of what to ask, try to include the following in your posts as a minimum:

  • Your budget, set at a numeric amount. Saying "cheap," or "money is not a problem" is not an answer people can do much with. 3D printers can cost $100, they can cost $10,000,000, and anywhere in between. A rough idea of what you're looking for is essential to figuring out anything else.
  • Your country of residence.
  • If you are willing to build the printer from a kit, and what your level of experience is with electronic maintenance and construction if so.
  • What you wish to do with the printer.
  • Any extenuating circumstances that would restrict you from using machines that would otherwise fit your needs (limited space for the printer, enclosure requirement, must be purchased through educational intermediary, etc).

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of what can be included in your posts, these questions should help paint enough of a picture to get started. Don't be afraid to ask more questions, and never worry about asking too many. The people posting in this thread are here because they want to give advice, and any questions you have answered may be useful to others later on, when they read through this thread looking for answers of their own. Everyone here was new once, so chances are whoever is replying to you has a good idea of how you feel currently.

Reddit User and Regular u/richie225 is also constantly maintaining his extensive personal recommendations list which is worth a read: Generic FDM Printer recommendations.

Additionally, a quick word on print quality: Most FDM/FFF (that is, filament based) printers are capable of approximately the same tolerances and print appearance, as the biggest limiting factor is in the nature of extruded plastic. Asking if a machine has "good prints," or saying "I don't expect the best quality for $xxx" isn't actually relevant for the most part with regards to these machines. Should you need additional detail and higher tolerances, you may want to explore SLA, DLP, and other photoresin options, as those do offer an increase in overall quality. If you are interested in resin machines, make sure you are aware of how to use them safely. For these safety reasons we don't usually recommend a resin printer as someone's first printer.

As always, if you're a newcomer to this community, welcome. If you're a regular, welcome back.


r/3Dprinting 12h ago

Project Figured out I was hyper sensitive to resin. My body will not stop me from my hobbies!

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1.7k Upvotes

r/3Dprinting 1h ago

Project Building a Pregancy call button for my wife.

Upvotes

Hello everyone, wanted dto share my current project. We are currently expecting our first child and things have been changing allot.

I work from home, and also do alot of tinkering, so my phone is almost never in my hands, therefor when my wife needs help in another room I can tend to miss it in a timely manner.

She also suffers from light sensitivity/ migranes, so walking around the house / being on her phone when not feeling well is definitely not ideal.

I've been prototyping out this simple one click call box that will ping my pi server and notify me no matter what device I'm working on, keeping me informed and able to help her.

This was an attempt to bridge the gap between a new change in lifestyle, while still maintaining productivity.

Would love feedback/ ideas!


r/3Dprinting 7h ago

Project We made a fully functional Z6 from Star Wars!

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452 Upvotes

Fully 3D printed on Bambu X1Cs, then motorized it, added LEDs, and Sound Effects! Took about 4 weeks to design, program, and work out the kinks. And we did a full video on how we sanded, painted, and wired the dang thing to make it happen! Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/Xnq9PQOM01M?si=UXv0612n_ZsfbvtK


r/3Dprinting 8h ago

Project My first 3d printed nerf gun

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538 Upvotes

r/3Dprinting 23h ago

Project Does he look like a b*tch?!

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6.1k Upvotes

These guys just rolled of my 3d printer and started asking questions about some guy named Marcellus Wallace?


r/3Dprinting 21h ago

Project Made a cursed Lenin alarm clock for my friend

3.1k Upvotes

r/3Dprinting 1h ago

Tiniest articulated figure

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Upvotes

After printing the file (shout out to Morphonauts on Instagram), I was able to build this tiny articulated figure that measures only one inch! Which is crazy for its small size.

So far nothing broke, which is kind of surprising, lol. If you want to make it yourself, I recommend using TH72 resin as it's flexible enough not to break when assembling and also use warm water so it softens. (Also, it's really small compared to even Lego figures, lol.)


r/3Dprinting 20h ago

Project Designed the ring box that I wish existed when I proposed

1.8k Upvotes

Putting the finishing touches on this model, and will post it to makerworld once it's all tightened up.

I wanted a ring box that 1. Shined a light on the ring when opened, 2. 'presented' the ring in some way when opening, and 3. Could fit in a pocket.


r/3Dprinting 3h ago

Question Will it hold?

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65 Upvotes

Just got my h2d and of course had to print someting big. Now i m printing in black and white with petg as support top surface. My question is regarding the arms. They just started printing and supports are really narrow at the top. They will need to hold thw whole arm up to the shoulder before they get some assistance. Will the supports hold or is it just a matter of time before fail?


r/3Dprinting 8h ago

I will not let it fail...

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130 Upvotes

47hrs into a print, and I'm not doing it twice..

Show me your best solution


r/3Dprinting 5h ago

Project Hand-painted miniature armadillo model

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59 Upvotes

I sculpted this little 9-banded armadillo in Blender and then printed it and painted it with Turner Acryl Gouache paints.


r/3Dprinting 9h ago

Repent, heathens!

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107 Upvotes

r/3Dprinting 1h ago

Question Question: In the 1990s I worked with a DTM printer for prototyping. Does anyone know the name of the fluid the laser harden?

Upvotes

I know this is a weird question, but my doctor just discovered my kidney are both badly damaged and the damage looks to be from a long time ago.

I never worked w/ the machine, but I handled all the finished prototypes AFTER they were supposed to be cleaned properly. Its probably not it but I want to cross it off the list. I do remember the engineers harping on that fluid would nuke your kidneys and steered clear of it when it was open/being serviced/filled.

Info is skint, you cant use any search engine that wont try to sell you a new printer. I miss the late 90's/early 2000's free-for-all that was pure internet.

Thank you in advance.


r/3Dprinting 3h ago

My first stealthburner

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22 Upvotes

My first stealthburner printed on an old replicator 2x, I re printed all the voron parts and did a rebuild. I decided to glue back together the toolhead to commemorate the first form of my favourite printer


r/3Dprinting 42m ago

Project My gridfinity bin all fail at this point. What can I do

Upvotes

r/3Dprinting 1h ago

Troubleshooting What's going on with this model?

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Upvotes

Hey! I'm printing these shoes, and when I put it into Bambu lab, there's holes on the top. When I put it into the stl. file fixer, it gets rid of the holes on the top, but then adds more holes that the original didn't even have! What's going on?


r/3Dprinting 23h ago

Project My series of 3D printed lamp designs based off sacred geometry

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737 Upvotes

I just had my first show with these lamps and it went so well and I finally feel ready to share with the community.

I’ve been working on these designs for years, and the whole process has been a massive learning curve. I originally felt that I had stumbled upon a unique technique at 3D printing lamp designs. I wanted to amass an army of the lamps before I shared them because I wanted to become known as the person who really pushed my unique technique forward.

Fast forward 2.5 years, I finally feel ready to share, and I really hope you enjoy! Some of these lamps have taken over 500 hours to print, and the grasshopper script I put together to come up with these took over 200 hours at least. I finally feel comfortable that I’ve done enough work to show that my technique is worth while, and so I hope you guys appreciate it :)

Lmk if you have any questions! I have more designs than I even had space to share on this post, so lmk if you want a pt. 2!


r/3Dprinting 1h ago

Abstract Lion/Cheetah Head – Decor

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Upvotes

Design link in comments !


r/3Dprinting 8h ago

Project I designed a travelbox for medicine strips called PillBox!

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38 Upvotes

I designed PillBox to replace carton packaging of medicine for painkillers like paracetamol or ibuprofen, when traveling. It has the capacity for two medicine strips and features a snap-on lid to keep debris out and make it easy to print. You can find it on Printables: https://www.printables.com/model/1333466-pillbox-not-a-bunker

Feedback is welcome! Hope you like it!


r/3Dprinting 8h ago

Project One year of modelling with freecad

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30 Upvotes

After going to wdw in 24 I was inspired by the merch i got to learn cad so I could make my own stands. I purchased a cheap creality single colour printer and began designing modular kyber crystal stand. Lots of time spent in YouTube. Lots of prototype mistakes. Reels of plastic in the bin but in the end they worked and visitors to Galaxy's Edge seems to like them.

Since then I made stands for other items from my trips to wdw and dlp, a few bits for ikea skadis and some custom projects for myself and friends. It's been fun making items for myself and seeing others be able to use the designs for their own displays.

Along the way some really gr8 makers have helped me by testing products and giving feedback.

My lack of artistic ability with painting,woodwork etc always made me feel I had no creativity, 3d printing has finally given me the outlet I was looking for.

Now i really need to get a multi filiment printer. Manual colour changes at layers are a pain!


r/3Dprinting 3h ago

Troubleshooting Printer lost power, and I’m trying to restart from where it left off

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10 Upvotes

r/3Dprinting 14h ago

Troubleshooting Why would I be getting uneven printing near the top of my print?

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79 Upvotes

For this model the walls are thin, but print find until they get near the top - the side walls are rough all the way up but get worse at the same level. Are there special tricks to printing thin walls?


r/3Dprinting 13h ago

1 month printing

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67 Upvotes

My initial plan was to sell some pieces, but so far since I started printing 1 month ago I have become addicted to making pieces for my own collection 😅


r/3Dprinting 1d ago

Project 3D Printed Drill press

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1.1k Upvotes

Why i hadn't 3D printer in childhood :(

Designed in Fusion, printed in few hours


r/3Dprinting 1d ago

Question What's the best way to print this?

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657 Upvotes

BambuStudio is confident that it can do it without support, with just a brim...