free cad software for 3d printing reddit

Known for their reliability and affordable price point, they quickly became the “go-to” printer for newbies. The Chinese company, Creality, manufactures and sells the “Ender” line of 3D printers. I recommend starting with the Ender line of 3D printers if you fall into this category.

You want to explore and experiment with 3D printing, but it is not part of your everyday workflow.

Print rough prototypes or ‘fun’ objects from Thingiverse or.

Plan on only 3D printing only a few times each week or month.

Enjoy building, tweaking, maintaining, or modifying machines.

We’ll call this category the “Tinkerers.” The first hobbyist category includes all hobbyists on a tight budget, with minimal 3D printing needs. 3D Printers that cost more often require less attention and regular maintenance. Let’s get started with the 3 ‘buckets’ of hobbyists, as seen in the graph below.

These recommendations are a combination of my personal and professional experiences – I only recommend products that I either own or have used before. I’m fortunate to have worked with well over 40 consumer-level printers, in addition to several commercial ($100K+) 3D printers. FFF include any 3D Printers that melt plastic (called ‘filament’) as they build on top of the previous layer. The recommendations on this page will only include FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) 3D Printing, which is the most common type of 3D printing.

Instead of comparing features, we’ll look at three categories of hobbyist printers, which directly correlate to the amount of time you’ll devote to working with the printer. In this post, I’ll take a non-traditional approach to recommend 3D printers for hobbyists. With that said, it’s one of the more difficult questions to answer because each person has their own needs. I enjoy discussing 3D printers and helping others learn which 3D printer is best for them. This year, I’ve lost track of how many messages included “Kevin, what 3D printer should I get?”. The trend has even accelerated as an unexpected side effect of a global pandemic. More consumers than ever before are getting 3D printers for home use.

Free cad software for 3d printing reddit