Hello MPCNCers,
I bought my MPCNC, I didn’t print it myself.
Now I’m considering buying my own printer as I want to print some updates.
What (budget) 3D printer to get?
I was thinking about Ender 3 V2 or Ender 5 or
a Prusa I3 clone… I don’t know, so many options.
What do you guys advice?
Prusa mini! Prusa quality, but at a lower cost. Only caveat is the small print area, but it’s more than enough for MPCNC stuff.
What do you mean by ‘Prusa quality’?
From what I can find is the print quality is about the same, but Prusa has more features.
Just trying to be helpful here my friend. My experience with ender and prusa is that the technical quality of the prusa machines are far superior, and the support is great. Ender is a great entry level printer, but it can give you a lot of work and headaches. Prusa mini is a great compromise in my opinion.
Thanks for the help! Yeah the mini seems great. What about the Prusa clone?
Sorry, don’t know much about them! They might require some more tinkering? The prusa assembly guides are very straightforward and easy to follow.
I recommend this. I got this 2 weeks back just for MPCNC. All parts will be done printing today. On the side note, it’ll be worth buying parts from Ryan here. It’s not worth the time and hassle to print your own parts (even though it’s a lot of fun).
Ender 3 v2 is leaps ahead of Ender 3, or ender 3 pro. Nice design upgrade and silent motherboard. You won’t regret it. My local Microcenter had it for 250.
I wouldn’t go with a clone, clones are great for some things (I buy arduino clones) but a 3d printer i feel like you want the brand name. There are alot of good options out there. I personally would rather have somthing to tinked with so prusa is not my first choice(maybe I’m just a sadist?) I like the ender 3 I have. I have also looked into the Homer printers and may get one of those at some point.
@Atom I think like you my friend! 
I got ender 3 v2 because it is hackable. Octoprint is what makes it awesome. Microcenter also has Raspberry Pi4 for 24.99 which makes it way more “smarter”.
Quality of a 3d print depends on tuning. In just 2 weeks, i have learnt a lot about 3d printing. It’s a learning journey and a skill to be perfected over a period of time, most important one being bed levelling and bed adhesion.
Thanks for the replies! I’m leaning towards an Ender 3 V2 or BIQU B1 (an Ender clone from Bigtreetech). It looks like the BIQU B1 is a little bit better with more upgrade possibilities.
I just nought one a few weeks ago.
I have a Burly version atm, not sure if I want to upgrade to Primo. Maybe in the future. But I want to print some other upgrades, like active cooling for the stepper motors with fans and for example a dust shoe.
For example from this video:
I got an ender 5 pro because it’s two more than a 3… and it was pro. Seriously though, I’m quite please with it as it was mostly assembled out of the box. Levelling wasn’t hard to do. I built an “enclosure” around it (sticks of wood with plastic sheeting) to keep my air conditioning vent from dumping cold air on it causing warping/lifting of corners of prints.
I could see a BIQU being a good clone, alot of the upgrades to my ender 3 came from BTT anyway.
Yes it seems like a really good clone, I’m thinking about going for the BIQU…
I just ordered the BIQU, Black Friday started and it’s a good deal. €10,- more than the Ender 3 V2, but I wanted the BTT motherboard.
Everyone thanks for the advice! I’ll probably come back with a lot off questions about 3D printing 
As usual I am going to recommend the Prusa Mini.
Hey Philipp,
The mini seems great too, a lot off good options I guess… I chose for the BIQU, hope I’m going to be happy with it…
Prusa printers has a great reputation at being high performance and beginner friendly. Mostly, you are paying extra for the extra thought, testing, tuning and instructions that they can do.
Some people have told me, “I have a prusa clone and it sucks” but when you dig in, they are talking about a prusa i3 style printer, like the anets. Yes, those are cheap kits that have cut every corner and need a lot of work to get started.
The BIQU printers seem like an interesting combination of cheap parts, but good features. If a big community gets together around them and starts working out the tuning, they will be a great buy. Teaching tech seems to like them.
Pretty much any printer you can buy now is better than an average printer 5 years ago. So there really aren’t any losing choices. They all need some work sometimes.
I went with a geeetech i3 clone. If you don’t mind tinkering and learning, then it’s a good machine. But by the time I finished upgrading and changing parts, I only saved a little off of buying the actual machine.
I did learn a lot about 3d printers because of it.
I know you already purchased but I want to give another thumbs up for prusa.
I got a used “2 pack” with an mk2.5s that worked and an mk3s that did not (and an mmu2 5 filament changer that I have yet to tackle) While frustrating at times, I learned a lot from fixing the broken one and would have missed that experience If I bought new. I sold the 2.5 and overall got a good deal. But used prusas don’t come up on Craigslist much.
i will second that! my first printer was a prusa mendel I2 that i build from scratch (literally, i bought every individual component and point to point soldered it on a bread board, except for the uno and the stepper drivers) and it is a piece of trash next to even the cheapest 3d printer out now.
blast from the past:
