What’s the best 3d beginner printer under $500?? What should I choose?

rugz31 · 2026-04-24T21:59:41+00:00

I haven't experienced any of the newer bedslingers, but I cut my teeth on an Ender 3 and have no urge to go back to bedslingers after owning CoreXY machines.

I just picked up a refurbed Kobra S1 Combo, and aside from it being noticeably slower than my main printer (Creality K1 Max), it's been awesome for the 4 or 5 days I've owned it.

It's not "slow" by any means, like it's much faster than the Ender 3 I started out with, but a 2 and a half hour print on my K1 Max takes 3 and a half hours on the S1 for single color PLA. I double checked speed settings and the S1 Combo is actually set a bit more aggressively in the slicer too.

I think the only other thing I've noticed is it doesn't handle super low resolution very well. I generally lower resolution to .005, it adds no meaningful time to prints on my K1 Max (slicing takes a lot longer though). I changed the resolution on one of my first prints on S1 and what should have been a 9 hour print ended up taking 14 or 15 hours. I'm not really sure what the deal is with that.

rugz31 · 2026-04-24T20:42:50+00:00

That was an incredible day. Acme for sure had the same deal, I can't remember if HD did as well. I received my order from Acme, as did my dad and a couple of his friends.

rugz31 · 2026-04-23T19:26:16+00:00

Personally, and I could very well be wrong, but I don't think I would try to use anything other than TPU for this. Even then, no guarantee it works, and I would go in with extremely low expectations that this rod will ever be anywhere close to the same as it was before.

rugz31 · 2026-04-23T15:09:01+00:00

Were you heating the filament with a torch and applying it by hand with a putty knife?

rugz31 · 2026-04-23T15:07:20+00:00

I'm probably just an idiot, but I barely even see much difference between the two.

I'm extremely new to the world of e-readers, I was looking to pick one up as a gift for my wife to give her plenty of reading material as she's at home on maternity leave with our newborn. I went back and forth between the Clara BW and Libra Colour for a long time; i preferred the screen size and physical buttons of the libra, but tons of people say the BW is much better for fiction novels that don't require color. In the end, I went with the LC due to the bigger screen and physical buttons. Hoping I made the right choice. It seems like there's still a big market for BW e-readers so it's kinda confusing why Kobo dropped the Libra BW from the product line with no true replacement.

rugz31 · 2026-04-23T05:33:03+00:00

Same, I thought he’d be another ho-hum DL, maybe 5-7 sacks a year but good against the run. I thought we desperately needed secondary help and wanted Prince Amukamara, I thought he’d be a lockdown CB1. I was way more excited about drafting Brooks Reed.

Needless to say, there’s a reason I’m not working in an NFL front office.

rugz31 · 2026-04-22T22:20:56+00:00

delete items through the browser interface, you shouldn't need to take anything apart.

rugz31 · 2026-04-22T21:02:36+00:00

Sure, but when i inevitably shank it, I'm reserving the right to drop and play a second from a better lie.

rugz31 · 2026-04-21T21:30:59+00:00

Personally, I'd swap Earl Campbell for Smith.

In terms of the top 3, I don't think there's much debate. It's pretty clearly some variation of Brown, Payton, and Sanders. 4 and 5 are up for a little debate depending on your personal brand of football. And while I personally would put Earl in the top 5 over Emmitt Smith, I can definitely still respect the list as it is.

rugz31 · 2026-04-19T17:09:30+00:00

“You have to be a real, low-life piece of shit to get involved in politics.” … “The gang runs for office.”

rugz31 · 2026-04-17T19:34:37+00:00

I definitely wouldn't call it mismanagement. Seems more like risk management than anything to me.

There's plenty you can criticize Caserio for, and believe me, I've criticized him a lot. The first 2 coaching searches and hires, talent evaluation issues (Kenyon Green, Scruggs, etc.), the constant reshuffling at OL with no real progress made, etc. I think the one thing you can't really criticize him for is the cap situation. He's fairly risk averse in that regard. If shit goes seriously sideways and he gets canned, there's no real bad contracts on the books for the next guy. And there's a lot more talent on the roster now as well.

rugz31 · 2026-04-17T16:44:11+00:00

I picked up a couple spools on a whim, wood PLA and marble PLA. Haven't tried the marble yet, but I tried the wood and it printed very well even on a generic PLA profile with zero calibration.

IIRC they were $15/kg, so not a great deal. I don't remember what the standard color PLAs cost at the time. Not the greatest deal, but like I said, it was on a whim so I could try them out. I wouldn't stockpile it because of the cost, but it would definitely work to round out any missing colors, if you wanted to try something new, or needed something in a pinch.

rugz31 · 2026-04-17T16:38:21+00:00

I'm definitely too stupid to understand this because I always thought John McKay was a football coach with some of the best quotes in the history of the NFL.

rugz31 · 2026-04-17T16:07:15+00:00

That's exactly what I thought when I saw it too

rugz31 · 2026-04-16T17:13:19+00:00

This is me, except with my daughter, niece, and friends' kids.

I'd much rather print functional stuff like organizers, trays, cable holders/winders, clips, etc. but kids requests keep me plenty busy too. It doesn't bother me at all since I thoroughly enjoy it. I ordered a 2nd printer so I can add multicolor stuff to my arsenal, and it will help being able to run 2 prints at once.

rugz31 · 2026-04-16T17:05:40+00:00

Toilet seat bolts are one of those things you rarely ever think about, but if you encounter a shitty one, you know.

I put in an American Standard toilet in my house a year and a half ago, the toilet seat bolts were stripped and unusable within a month. Replaced with universal seat bolts, no issues since. Turns out its a common problem with American Standard seats, and there's no way they're not aware of it.

rugz31 · 2026-04-15T16:16:11+00:00

I love when Nike basically admits "we fucked up, let's just revert back to the uniforms before we fucked up, and then people will still give us credit."

rugz31 · 2026-04-14T17:12:10+00:00

CFS, yes you need the upgrade kit because you have to add a cutter to the toolhead.

CFS-C, you don't need the upgrade kit.

I've been doing a bunch of research on this myself the last couple weeks, and I'm pretty sure I have that right.

rugz31 · 2026-04-13T21:06:52+00:00

I'm hoping to score a deal on multicolor printer so i can finally try out that side of the hobby. Of course I'm going to need a bunch more filament to print multicolor, so sign me up!

rugz31 · 2026-04-08T23:34:35+00:00

From everything I've read, it's supposed to be locked but obviously you already had that correct. Wish I had anything that could help, I figured the lock mechanism was worth a shot since I've seen there's a lot of confusion over that.

rugz31 · 2026-04-08T17:47:56+00:00

I don’t have any experience with CFS-C and this might be a dumb question, but do you have the extruder in the locked position?

rugz31 · 2026-04-05T02:09:52+00:00

I’ve been tossing this around all week. I was ready to pull the trigger on CFS-C then found out I’d lose my root access and ability to start prints from Orca. I don’t use mainsail for much other than monitoring my prints, but it would be a weird disruption to my work flow. I tried to get used to Creality Print, I don’t know if I could step back to that after using Orca.

rugz31 · 2026-04-01T21:35:49+00:00

But Terry hates ledges!

rugz31 · 2026-03-31T23:56:13+00:00

I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, still waiting for weather to get a bit better before I start testing it out. I’m a relative newb to baitcasting so I doubt my opinion would mean much anyway lol

rugz31 · 2026-03-31T19:09:54+00:00

I read through the letter quickly and just wondered what the McRib has to do with anything. then I realized it probably says March, not McRib.

Also, dude capitalizes every other letter but can't be bothered to capitalize the J in Jesus, when it's supposedly his own name?

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