I am considering getting a 3D printer later this year after reading a review for a sub £200 one in a magazine I subscribe as well as noting Aldi had a sub £300 one on sale recently. I am a bit flexible on price at the moment but we are talking hundreds £s and not thousands. It does seem that prices have come down as they have got popular.
I am hoping to use it to make small models with some detail. I intend to research the matter but would value any opinion from anybody who owns one regards make, what specifications I need to look at and what features are essential.
Well there must be some 3D printer review sites. But a few things to consider are the increments the motors can step in, the type of plastic(s) it can take, how many nozzles and overall printble size
I get the feeling £200 will only get you a 'toy' printer, a few people here have them, so may comment, look at Angus aka Maker's Muse on youtube, he does various torture test prints as well as tips and reviews...
I bought (£99 including postage) a Tronxy P802MA printer kit. Since then postage has become extra. It is a clone of the Anet A8 which is, in turn, a clone of the RepRap; this means there's vast amounts of community support.
Its main benefit over the Anet is its self-levelling feature which is an extra on the Anet. It stops a lot of mucking about levelling the bed manually.
Although its frame is plastic (7mm thick) rather than metal, it's plenty rigid enough for me (although I haven't made any very tall items). I would not discount a printer on the grounds of its plastic frame. I haven't found it necessary to print any of the parts that other people deem essential (rather obsessively IMHO).
It worked first time and produces surprisingly good prints. When the filament which came with the kit ran out there was a further increase in usability when I bought some Geeekrite filament (£23 for 2kg) which is less prone to snapping after a print is complete.
I really enjoyed assembling the kit over 2 afternoons and although there's a learning curve you really understand what's going on as a result.
I keep the printer in the garage or, if we're not expecting visitors, the dining room as it's a bit noisy to have it operating in my study (as they all are). As a result I use Repetier server on a Raspberry Pi attached to the printer to connect to Repetier Host on the PC in my study.
For the first time in my life (I'm 76) I learnt Computer-Aided Design and after a lot of experimenting I settled on Tinkercad as doing everything I needed reasonably intuitvely.
The amount of detail you can get in your price bracket is probably restricted by nozzle size. The standard size is 0.4 mm. If you want more detail than that smaller nozzles are available cheaply though I think
0.2mm is as small as you want to go. I haven't tried it.
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