Recommended Gear for Getting Started

We get asked this a lot: what should I buy if I want to start printing? So here is what we actually run, what we actually feed it, and what we would tell a friend.

Two things to be straight about. This is not a lab review — it is one shop’s experience with the machines we bought with our own money. The links below go straight to the manufacturers. They are not affiliate links — we make nothing if you buy any of it.

Start here, before you buy anything

The single biggest change in 3D printing over the last few years is that the machine levels its own bed. If you read an older guide describing paper-under-the-nozzle rituals, that advice is out of date.

Buy something modern with automatic bed leveling and you skip most of the frustration that made people give up on this hobby. Almost every failed print is a first-layer problem, and auto-leveling removes most first-layer problems.

Beyond that, the things that genuinely matter:

• An enclosure, if you ever want to print anything beyond PLA, or anything tall. A stable warm chamber stops tall prints warping or splitting partway up.
• Speed, which sounds like a spec-sheet number but is really about whether you finish a print in an evening or a weekend.
• A community. Popular machines have profiles, spare parts and answers already written. An obscure printer is a lonely printer.

The printers we use

Starting out — Creality Hi

This is the machine that quietly gets through most of our orders, and it is the one we would point a beginner at. It is quick, consistent, and it does not demand much of you before it starts producing usable parts.

Build volume is 260 × 260 × 300 mm, which is far more than you think you need until the day it is not. It handles layer heights from 0.1 to 0.35 mm, so there is room to trade finish against time as you learn what matters.

Stepping up — Creality K2 Plus

Bigger, enclosed, and actively heated. We bought it for lampshades, vases and anything tall, and the heated chamber is the reason those come out clean rather than splitting halfway up.

350 mm in every direction, and it takes the Creality Filament System for multi-color work. This is a machine to grow into rather than start on — but if you already know you want large or multi-color prints, buying it first saves you buying twice.

What we have not tried

We run Creality machines, so that is what we can speak to honestly. Bambu Lab and Prusa are the other two names you will hear constantly, and both have strong reputations. We have not owned either, so we are not going to pretend to compare them for you.

Filament

We buy Elegoo, Sunlu and Anycubic PLA and PETG, and we have had good results from all three. At this end of the market the brand matters far less than people expect. What matters is that the filament is dry.

PLA or PETG?

Short version: PLA for anything decorative, PETG for anything with a job to do. PLA holds finer detail and color; PETG survives heat, sunlight and being knocked about. We wrote the longer comparison in PLA or PETG: which one do you want?

Start with PLA. It is the most forgiving material there is, and you will learn more from a hundred successful PLA prints than from fighting something exotic.

The thing beginners get wrong

Filament absorbs moisture out of the air, and wet filament prints badly — stringing, popping and crackling noises from the nozzle, weak and rough parts. PETG is noticeably worse for this than PLA.

You do not need to solve this expensively. Keep spools in a sealed box with desiccant when they are not on the machine. If a spool has been sitting open for months and prints badly, a filament dryer will usually rescue it. This one habit will improve your prints more than any upgrade you can buy.

The laser

Our engraving is done on a Creality Falcon A1 Pro, a 20 W diode laser with a 358 × 268 mm work area.

If you are considering a laser, the advice we would give is about the enclosure rather than the wattage. Ours is fully enclosed and Class 1 rated, with air assist and flame detection. An open-frame laser is cheaper and genuinely dangerous in a shared space — it needs eye protection, ventilation and constant supervision. Lasers set things on fire; that is how they work.

Tools worth having on day one

• Flush cutters. For trimming supports and filament ends cleanly. The single most-used tool here.
• A thin scraper or spatula, for parts that grip the plate harder than expected.
• Digital calipers. The moment you want a print to fit something real, guessing stops working.
• A glue stick. Unglamorous, and it solves adhesion problems on stubborn plates.
• Spare nozzles. They wear, they clog, and they cost very little. 0.4 mm is the standard.

What not to spend money on yet

Not exotic filaments — carbon fiber blends need hardened nozzles and will chew a standard one. Not a resin printer as your first machine, unless you have already decided you want miniatures and are prepared for the mess and the fumes. Not upgrades to a machine you have not yet found the limits of.

Buy a decent printer, a few rolls of PLA, and print a hundred things. The gaps in your setup will announce themselves.

Questions

If you are weighing up a machine and want a straight answer from someone who runs these daily, ask us. We would rather talk you out of the wrong purchase than have you give up on this in a month.

And if you would rather someone else did the printing, that is what we are here for.