As other people have mentioned, Prusa and Bambu make the most reliable printers on the market. The plus side to Bambu is the price. They are definitely cheaper than prusa printers.

However, I would make sure to be aware of the controversies surrounding Bambu. This is not a deal breaker for many people, but it wouldn't be right not to at least take a glance at them. Especially considering you are on Lemmy.

This is where Prusa shines. They have not had nearly the same amount of controversies. Their hardware, firmware, and software are all open source. They also have amazing customer support. As others said, a used Prusa can be found within your price range.

This is just something to know of. I know a lot of people who are happy with both brands, and you can't really go wrong either way. I just think this is another thing to consider.

Do you want the printer to be a tool, or a hobby (i.e. you don’t mind fiddling with the printer itself to improve the results, you don’t mind spending more to upgrade components, etc)?

If the printer itself is a hobby you can go cheap, but if you want something reliable you don’t have to mess with or upgrade, I’d suggest getting something as nice as you can afford, maybe a Prusa mini or Bambu A1 mini if you don’t care about open source. Also consider something like a used Prusa Mk3.x.

My vote is for Bambu printers. I started with a super cheap Ender 3 V2 in 2020 and recently we got a Bambu X1 at work and it's so much easier, faster, and better. No more hours of troubleshooting issues, it just calibrates itself and goes.

The P1P is cheaper and might be a good option to look at. These printers are highly recommended on the reddit community too.

https://store.bambulab.com/collections/3d-printer

Speaking as a new hobbyist (2 months), I went with an Creality Ender 3 V3 KE. The cost was in the $250-300 USD range and it had a decent range of features.

I've used it almost every day since unpacking it. It's pretty easy to get to know. The Creality cloud slicing tool is good enough for me (for now), and can be run via a browser or app.

Microcenter has a variety of display models that you can check out. If I had known about it I probably would have gone prior to making my selection. I'm not sure my choice would have been different, but a little extra knowledge never hurts.

Looking at random Facebook marketplace postings I'd say you should go with a mk3s from Prusa. In NYC I'm seeing them for $350-$500 used and they're fantastic printers. Very much on the tool end of the tool:hobby spectrum.

Used Prusa MK3s

I'm late to the party and brand new, but I just went through what you're going through. I ended up buying an A1 based on the potential ability to add AMS later on and potentially print ABS/ASA.

I was heavily considering an Ender 3 V3 KE, but a few mentioned they just wished they would've gone Bambu, even though they had success with their KE. I just don't have as much time to futz with stuff as I'd like right now, and I want something that's relatively easy for my kids to use.

If you're tight on budget and like the tinkering aspect, I saw an eBay store oddly enough named SovolOfficial, that sells unrepaired and/or refurbished Enders for extremely cheap prices. Like around $50usd for Ender 3's. If it went for the time and kiddo aspect, I'd be all over that, modding along the way.

I don't have any experience with resin printers yet but have been poking around at FDM for the better part of a decade. In that price range (for FDM), I'd likely suggest a Creality K1C. It is not going to likely match the BambuLab printers but it's a great departure from previous by Creality, requiring little to no tinkering to make it work. If you can spare around $1k, and don't care about proprietary stuff, BambuLab X1 series is about the most turnkey that I know of. But, again, the Creality is (surprisingly) right there too with the K1C.

Note: It is probably possible to get similar results with mods to a K1 or K1Max - the nozzle brush seems to be critical to the K1C's reliability.

Right, lots of suggestions for Bambu and Prusa and rightfully so. But their prices are high and while they are worth it, they wouldn't be what I'd suggest for a first time printer.

The Ender 3 is what I'd suggest, though not the V1. The S1 or the v3 and good starting points for being in budget and having some modern features.

This isn't like the mid 2010's where it was hit or miss and the printers will have a slight chance of burning your house down. Hictop anyone? But these days even a $200 printer is good enough to start printing.

That said software is going to be your biggest pain point.

For the slicer make sure its compatible with PrusaSlicr or Cura. Preferability the former. This makes the models to print, and some cheep third party slicers makes their own with questionable quality and support.

For modeling, you have some options. Blender if you are looking to design 3d shapes like clay. Fusion360 is a cheap and free (while limited) solution for parametric cad design. With TinkerCAD is a good in between. But like Photoshop is to gimp, Fusion 360 is to FreeCAD and it may be worth learning how FreeCAD works since its an extremely flexible tool.

TL:DR Ender 3 V3/S1, Prusa Slicer, Cura, Blender, TinkerCAD, Fusion360, FreeCAD and you should be too to start printing and making brackets.

Bambulab A1 mini

Lots of different ways to get into it. I personally love my Elegoo printers (An older Neptune 2S and a Neptune 3 Pro)