A "Solution" to the price rises

[Trig]

Yeah, thats why I swerved BL, mate bought an X1c, so I was looking at that, and while I could have thrown £1400 at a printer and AMS, I started then looking at the P1P and P1S (bearing in mind I'm going back to this time last year when I started looking) and ended up getting the AnyCubic Kobra S1 Combo, 4 colour AMS, with heater, which the BL didn't have at the time, although they now have the AMS 2, the rest of the spec, was pretty much the same as the X1c, but for £519 landed, why would I need to spend £1400, and, I didn't have the space for the Prusa XL which would have been nice..

The Kobra S1, hasn't been faultless, I've broken things, things have broken while printing, but, there's an active sub on reddit, some decent videos on YT, and their CS has been spot on when I have needed them, you just have to wait for parts to arrive, but you can get stuff on Aliexpress and Amazon that'll keep you running..

That said, I did look at the Snapmaker U1 on Kickstarter when I was in Saudi back in September, but we were due to move house, and the S1 wasn't that old at the time, and I wouldn't have the space for 2 printers...
But, if I were looking now, the U1 would be in the top 3, but, that might not be valid for you, it doesn't have an enclosure nor any sort of filament drying function, although that might come down the line, and it depends if the filaments you plan on using, actually need drying beforehand..

I broke my teeth on an Ender 3 Pro, a lot of people wills ay upgrade this, replace that, any time you get a problem, but, if you actually learn about 3d printers, fault finding down the road on another machine is easier if you understand the fundamentals.
I ended up upgrading the plop out of it but not to the lengths some do, then sold it..

[Saracen]

It's that Ender upgrade path I especially want to avoid, but there are other aspects too. I get the appeal of that and but for the notion of limited time, I might have gone that route. But given my age, and health, and deriving from overall health is a marked lack of energy, I want absolutely minimal hassle. I mean, doing anything saps my energy. Like, having a bath, getting dressed, blah, blah ... things most people (me included until fairly recently) are WAY harder than they used to be,, even a year or two ago. Going out for a coffee for a couple of hours with a mate implies, as preparation, having a bath, getting dressed etc and by that point, I'm tired enough to need a rest and haven't yet set foot out of the door.

I wouldn't normally outline stuff at tthat level but it sets the tone for the next bit. I want a printer that, in all respects, just works. By far the main part of my interest is what I can make with it, not coaxing it intto working for long enough to do so. I do not want to be fixing things any more than absolutely necessary, because I just don't have the energy, or frankly the patience, any more. Doing even those simple, take-for-granted tasks wipes me out and if using a printer is a fight, or frustrating, I'm going to end up shoving it in the garage and pretending it doesn't exist.

Which is why I really want a miracle printer. One that doesn't (or didn't) exist, which is pretty much one that can do everything I might want to do, because this whole exerise is a thing I probably don't have time left to diterate several times, upgrading this or replacing that. And, given my comments about the fun fund, the price level (within reason) isn't a criteria high up my list. But nor is that a 'money no object' thing. It's just that provided I can afford to do it at all, I want to do it right (for my purposes) or not do it at all. Within reason, therefore, whether it costs me £500 or £2500, for instance, is not as important as doing it right because I don't have time, or the energy, to do it twice. But the double-edged sword is if I don't do something soon, I risk running out of time (or energy) to do it at all. Hence, price not a high priority. Exactly the same is true for a new PC (or laptop, even) in that if the RAM is £120 or £600, it doesn't drastically affect whether I do it or not, provided that when/if I do, I get it right. Or just don't do it.

So I want to be able to support the more exacting material types, like CF, or ABS, etc. Multi-colour? Maybe, but it's less important to me. If I were to be doing multi-colour prints, though, well ... part of me is certtainly a tight git, and while I'll happily spend on equipment, I do NOT want a mountain of expensive wasted filament. So If I do multi-colour, it has to be about state-of-art in material usage. No poop-shoot mountain. A modest purge-tower, yes, but a mountain of poop from color changes? Nope.

Hence my current interest in the Core One L with the Bondtech passive tool-changer. That strikes me as a pretty elegant solution and in many ways, helps with both fancy maerial (without forever swapping hotends manually) without going to quite the expense, and slightly kludgy (if I'm honest) XL 5-tool active changer. That is starting to look like a developmental dead-end - revolutionary at the time (at a price) but (noting my huge lack of knowledge) a dead-end compared to the Bondtech method, which presumably is something Prusa agree with, that being why they're working with Bondtech.

My worry is it is still a few months out.

Finally, if Prusa are known for anything, it's customer service. For being available, bsed in Europe (minimal time zone issues), and supporting their prodcts if users do get failures, for so, SO long. I think that alone is enough to funnel me very much away from far-Eastern makes, whether Bambu or not. As I said, my focus there is really on giving myself absotely minimal hassle or faffing about even if it comes at a price. The money price is less onerous than the hassle, frustation, time and energy price, if you see what I mean. Which is why I explained all that stuff about the energy cost of something like getting dressed. I also have to bear in mind that whatever my health is today, it's inexorably deteriorating. Again, as I said a while back, it focusses priorities.

[BlueBall]

If you had a 3d printer, which type of cheese would you make?

Still waiting for an answer

[Trig]

If you had a 3d printer, which type of cheese would you make?

Still waiting for an answer

I get the feeling that this is going to be a dad joke, and you're dying to tell us the punchline...

[Jonj1611]

Not cheesestrings is it?

[BlueBall]

I'm building 2 new PCs, one for me and one for my daughter.. Thankfully I bought all the parts last year before all this started as there was two lots of DDR5 64GB required. I paid about £230 per set and it is currently at £850 a set!!!!!!!!!

https://www.kingstonmemoryshop.co.uk/ki ... -dimm-expo

PS that is the CL36 modules and I bought CL30 but it is no longer listed.

A set of RAM I paid £224 for is now over £1000

https://uk.insight.com/en_GB/shop/produ ... nbuffered/

[AGTDenton]

One good thing is we'll have to revert back to dumb white goods that aren't trying to spy on you

[joshwa]

Not RAM, but Scan seem to have the best deal on an SSD 256GB Integral drive £30 today but often £35, which is half the price of the next SSD drive.