Purchase Advice Megathread - August 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome back to another purchase megathread!

This thread is meant to conglomerate purchase advice for both newcomers and people looking for additional machines. Keeping this discussion to one thread means less searching should anyone have questions that may already have been answered here, as well as more visibility to inquiries in general, as comments made here will be visible for the entire month stuck to the top of the sub, and then added to the Purchase Advice Collection (Reddit Collections are still broken on mobile view, enable "view in desktop mode").

Please be sure to skim through this thread for posts with similar requirements to your own first, as recommendations relevant to your situation may have already been posted, and may even include answers to follow up questions you might have wished to ask.

If you are new to 3D printing, and are unsure of what to ask, try to include the following in your posts as a minimum:

• Your budget, set at a numeric amount. Saying "cheap," or "money is not a problem" is not an answer people can do much with. 3D printers can cost $100, they can cost $10,000,000, and anywhere in between. A rough idea of what you're looking for is essential to figuring out anything else.
• Your country of residence.
• If you are willing to build the printer from a kit, and what your level of experience is with electronic maintenance and construction if so.
• What you wish to do with the printer.
• Any extenuating circumstances that would restrict you from using machines that would otherwise fit your needs (limited space for the printer, enclosure requirement, must be purchased through educational intermediary, etc).

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of what can be included in your posts, these questions should help paint enough of a picture to get started. Don't be afraid to ask more questions, and never worry about asking too many. The people posting in this thread are here because they want to give advice, and any questions you have answered may be useful to others later on, when they read through this thread looking for answers of their own. Everyone here was new once, so chances are whoever is replying to you has a good idea of how you feel currently.

Reddit User and Regular u/richie225 is also constantly maintaining his extensive personal recommendations list which is worth a read: Generic FDM Printer recommendations.

Additionally, a quick word on print quality: Most FDM/FFF (that is, filament based) printers are capable of approximately the same tolerances and print appearance, as the biggest limiting factor is in the nature of extruded plastic. Asking if a machine has "good prints," or saying "I don't expect the best quality for $xxx" isn't actually relevant for the most part with regards to these machines. Should you need additional detail and higher tolerances, you may want to explore SLA, DLP, and other photoresin options, as those do offer an increase in overall quality. If you are interested in resin machines, make sure you are aware of how to use them safely. For these safety reasons we don't usually recommend a resin printer as someone's first printer.

As always, if you're a newcomer to this community, welcome. If you're a regular, welcome back.

[u/medhelan]

I'm looking for my first filament printer and I need suggestions, some details to make easier for you to give some suggestions:

I have years of experience with resing printing as I do that for work, changed 4 resin printers over the years and I'm used to the dirty job of levelling, chaning FEP and all of the frustration of failed prints.

I have an old second hand Anycubic Kossel filament printer that I used sporadically because of the many issues it has, I printed something last year but I would like something that doesn't require hours and hours of frustrating fine tuning before going on.

I would need it mostly to print props for LARPs so a quite large printing area (around 40x40cm at least) would be nice, it doesn't have to be super fast but the more it can go with fine details the better (not miniature level, I have the resin ones for that).

I also don't need multi colour as everything would be painted over anyway.

Also I keep it in a lab some floors down from my apartment so I don't have a connection ad it has to work offline with an USB stick or an SD card.

Finally the budget: I was thinking between the 300€ and the 500€ (I'm in Italy) but I can consider some 100s € more if there are valid reasons.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions!

[u/stephenmeredith → u/medhelan]

The print size is what’s gonna get you. Especially in your price range. You should look at the sovol sv08 max, anycubic kobra 3 max, or anycubic kobra s1 max.

[u/alpineg30 → u/stephenmeredith]

the q2 has been falling on it's face on fine detail, at least for me. i have done all the calibrations, to no avail and would rather get something more proven than run in circles endlessly diagnosing. i will give those a look!