Well, now I've done it. I tossed the idea around for a good year and meant to buy last fall during Black Friday but chickened out at the last minute because I really hadn't done my homework and I knew "buyer's regret" would surface soon after the item arrived.
Then it dawned on me to look for a used item in Kijiji. That meant doing research first as you all know, buying privately means no return/no refund. I can live with that. Now, I dove into Kijiji. Holy cow. So many for sale! As usual the pricing was all over the map, from above the new retail price (what are they thinking, do they think buyers aren't going to know the value of the item before negotiations start?)
So I found a nice clean, but tiny 3d printer made by Creality, the Ender 2 Pro. It was only $160 and he included a cool wireless gizmo to control the printer from anywhere. I like that idea as these things run up to 600F so they could be a fire hazard. At least now I can the thing off if I leave the house and realize it was printing when I left.
Of course I couldn't make it print anything at home. Nada, Nein, zippo. I must have read 1000 internet pages troubleshooting why to no avail. I broke open a brand new roll of filament and BINGO!, problem solved. I guess the partial roll the guy gave me got waterlogged and was no good. Then I went printing, anything and everything. You really do have to dial these things in, but once you got it, very little fiddling is needed.
The bug bit me hard. Of course when I was browsing on Amazon and seeing some great sale on larger printers I thought, "hmm, since this model Creality is on sale for $xxx.xx I should be able to negotiate a used one for quite a bit less." So, back to Kijiji and I had pretty well made up my mind on the size, features and price for my second printer.(Interesting note, at least half the sellers I talked to had 2 or more printers even after they sold off the one advertised on Kijiji. Quite a few folks had printer farms, running at least 4 machines with the sky as the limit.)
I didn't have to look very far, there were 8+ machines with the price and features I wanted within ~150 km. It turns out that the day before I had arranged a road trip to see a machine in Richmond Hill I found an ad with not 1, BUT TWO printers with the features I wanted, but the price for BOTH machines was what I was willing to pay for just 1! There's just no way I could turn down a deal like that. I still can't figure out why they didn't sell before I found them. I missed so many other good price ones as they sold a day or two after they got posted. Oh well, maybe it's because dude lived in Cambridge and not the GTA. Doesn't matter, I ended up with them and I'm incredibly happy.
As I write this all 3 are busy printing. I have this huge list already of stuff I want to design and print. I used to know Autocad quite well at one time and the new version, from what I gather, lets you design with 3d printing in mind. Bonus! Now I know I have a decently interesting hobby that will keep me out of trouble this coming winter. Here's the first printer I bought, the tiny Ender 2 Pro. .
Good grief. I didn't realize I rambled on so much LOL!