Hi everyone. I’m looking into my first 3D printer and would like a resin one for the great detail it can produce. I’m looking for companies that make respected machines that aren’t out of China. I know of Prusa but their resin printer is incredibly expensive for me and a beginner.
As a second note, I would love to support a USA company as a first choice if available and like the software and firmware to be open source. I’m happy to have found PrusaSlicer with UVtools so there’s one less Chinese/semi proprietary/subscription based software.
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It’s important to note, here, that even if you buy a printer from an EU or US company… … it’s much more likely they bought their parts from china.
Inevitable, I think, if you go down through all the levels—aren’t some basic electronic components made only in China these days?
That depends on your opinion of the Taiwan situation. Taiwan is a big producer of chips and electronic components, and lots of electronics in general are made there.
I realize that that’s likely but hopefully there are still decent alternatives
The exact reason I prefer to avoid things made in China is the same as the reason their stuff is so affordable. Principled stances are rarely convenient.
I would have been willing to spend about one thousand on a printer like the Prusa Mk4 is but then I saw their resin printer is more expensive unfortunately.
This popped up in my feed and I’m not in the 3d printer field but generally you either get super expensive anything made in EU; super duper expensive made in US or cheap/ reasonable price from China.
Most of the stuff you will ever buy comes from China its not like they only make unreliable stuff. They can make them good as well, it depends on the final company to decide if they get cheap stuff from China or OK stuff from China
Prusa has some cheap printers made in EU as well, though not the resin ones OP is asking for.
They do have resin printer, but its obviously too expensive to OP
I know, that’s what I was saying.
It’s more expensive but you get what you pay for.
I dont have any model to recommend, but keep in mind that you might also need curing and cleaning station, proper ventilation, mask, gloves etc.
Thank you. I’ll definitely be getting those things too. Another reason why a multi-thousand dollar printer is too expensive
Even with moderate usage, no joke, I’d recommend getting a flammables cabinet to store IPA. At the end of every weekend, I drain our washing station back into two three liter jugs and put them in the flammables cabinet. I drain them while the washer is running to get the solid stuff out of the washer. They’re stored correctly, the cabinet prevents light from reaching the jugs, and the solids settle to the bottom of the jugs over the weekend. On Monday I carefully pour the top portion into the auto washer and top it off with new IPA. The settled layer gets poured into the waste container.
We have two printers at work, one wash station and one cure station. And we have 8x jugs of IPA in our flammables cabinet.
Before we started settling in the cabinet and decanting our wash solution, we went through an incredible amount of IPA that we had to deal with as waste. And this is from two SLA printers, which we use in addition to our Prusa MK3 and SLS nylon printers, so we don’t always use the resin printers.
For your first printer I’d actually advise for buying a used one: it’s cheaper and you wouldn’t support a chinese manufacturer even if you bought one of their printers
This is my course of action with anything I buy.
- Is there an ethical source
- Is there a second hand source
- Is there a EU company that may source the manufacture in China
- Rarely, buy the Chinese one
Came here to say this. Also you have a better chance of buying a known working/“dialed in” product.
I know of Prusa but their resin printer is incredibly expensive for me and a beginner.
“Not China” and cheap are very unlikely to go together. You’ll never get anything once you’ve compared price to the Chinese alternative. Wishing for a Prusa but at Chinese pricepoint, that’s never gonna happen.
Epax is a non Chinese brand (USA) that still isn’t as expensive as Prusa and from what I have learned is that it’s a good company with a good product. I’m not necessarily looking for something cheap, just not extremely expensive to me. I don’t want a Chinese based company’s product with lots of technology having access to my network in my house.
FormLabs, but they start at $2500.
Athéna make printer in US and EU but these are not cheap
Thanks for the lead. I’ll check them out
Have you considered EPax? They sometimes offer refurbs at price points that may fit your budget.
Not sure if all their components are US sourced, but they are US based and offer real customer support.
I just did a brief look at Epax and it looks like something I might be very interested in. The full price E10 8k is potentially a doable price point but they also sell a refurbished E10 8k for a great price. They are also supported on UVtools. I just have to do a little more research but they look promising.
I have not heard of this company but I’ll be looking into them now. Thank you very much
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Is this your first printer you’ve ever had?
If so I’d suggest getting one that has auto bed leveling, not having to worry about that is a very nice feature.
Prusa is kind of the reigning king of “it just works,” but they tend to be expensive. I myself have a Prusa MK4, but I wouldn’t really recommend that for a beginner due to the price, only reason I got it for my first personal printer is we use two MK3’s at the lab I worked at and I wanted something similar as that’s what I’m used to.
If you do decide to go with Prusa I’d look at the Mini (I’ve heard though that the Mini will benefit if you print a custom brace for it). The MK3 also got a pretty decent price drop with the release of the MK4, so that’s something to consider as well.
But otherwise I think Creality released a couple of new printers that aren’t too bad on price.
Given that you specifically mentioned the X1C, are you trying to do multi-colored prints or just want something fast?
Prusa is King for real. My Mk3 is fantastic. I wouldn’t second guess another purchase from them and it would be the first place I look for my next device.
They really are.
The MK3 is an absolute beast of a workhorse. We use two MK3s at the lab I work at. They collectively have 2000 hours of print time and they just now started exhibiting issues. One had a hotend fail, the other had a thermistor fail.
They’re damn good printers. I heard bad things about the MMU2, but I’m hopeful the MMU3 will be great, I have one on preorder.
I’d look into the nextruder upgrade for your MK3, it’s really nice. Only two thumbscrews to release the hot end out, and the LoveBoard makes servicing different components on the extruder a lot more painless.
Stay away from creality IMO, especially your first printer. Shit quality control and there are better options out there now in the budget arena like sovol and elegoo. You’ll spend more time troubleshooting than printing with creality in my experience.
I’ve heard some inklings of that. I’ve heard diehard fans say that they specifically got Creality printers because they wanted to work on a 3d printer, not have one that just worked out of the box. Though the K1Max from Creality looks pretty neat.
I myself always preferred low maintenance things, but I like knowing how they work. So I got the kit for my MK4 and built it on one of my days off. Took about as long as I’d heard (8+ hours), but was worth it.
Haven’t heard of sovol, I’ll look into them though. Always good to know the other brands.
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My MK4 is definitely a lot quicker than the MK3s we use at my lab. It’s certainly not the fastest printer on the market, but I’ve been very happy with it so far.
And what’s nice about it (from your perspective), you can very easily disable the WiFi permanently on it, given that the WiFi card is externally mounted on the board chassis and held in place with like one screw. I installed mine and finally was able to set up the PrusaConnect feature on it. I’m usually not a fan of cloud services but I trust Prusa more than I trust Bambu.
Regardless, if you can get your job site to fork the cash over for one, I have nothing but great things to say about the MK4. The nextruder and its LoveBoard will make maintenance on the hot end worlds easier and more convenient than the MK3 (which wasn’t that bad to start with).
Genuinely, why do y’all hate China printers? I mean, I’m not a big fan of China and their policies as well, but this “I don’t want China products” seems mildly racist to me. I wanna know y’all’s point of view.
From my understanding anyone in China has to comply with their tyrannical government. Based on that and knowing how China has already been spying on other countries (think TikTok for one example), I really don’t want something technological in my house which is made in China. It’s not based in racism. I’m looking at facts of how a particular government chooses to conduct itself. I’m choosing not to allow myself to be potentially surveillaled when I have the ability to easily prevent it.
Fair enough. But their products can be flashed with open spurce firmware, like klipper and marlin. That should remove any spying that would happen.
Of course, if you’re worried about spying, don’t get the closed source stuff like bambu or whatever, but there are those where you can just flash a new firmware on it.
I will look into this Klipper and Marlin. Thanks for the tip
