Several years ago I leapt enthusiastically into the realm of 3D printing by buying a massive, expensive delta-type printer. I had to put it together myself, which was fun, but after that I struggled to get it to print well. Even simply trying to get the prints to stick to the bed were difficult, leading me to add huge brims to all my parts which were a pain to cut off afterward. Eventually I gave up fiddling with it and it’s been gathering dust ever since.
I know that a lot of you treat the hobby as an opportunity for endless tinkering and optimization, which is great, but I think I’ve realized that what I’d prefer is something that just works out of the box with a minimum of adjustment.
The P1S by Bambu Labs, while not the cheapest (on sale now for 550$ without an ams) pretty much just works.
I’ve done PLA and PETG (various brands) using default settings and the thing just works. I’ve also used polycarbonate but that required a small amount of tweaking.
I guess it also depends on what you’re trying to print. If you are going to be printing figurines that you will paint, you might be better off getting a resin printer, though I can’t speak much to those as I haven’t used them, but we do use anycubic at work and I’ve seen some pretty good looking models come out of them.
I’ve also heard good things about the A1/A1 mini (also Bambu) from coworkers.
We probably have 30 or so 3D printers at work including a nylon powder 3D printer which is amazing but I’m not sure of the brand, and it’s probably expensive because it stands about 4.5 ft tall.