Does anyone have any experience of the Flashforge Dreamer 3D Printer Dual-extruder Printer, please?
Or indeed, the Flashforge Adventurer 3 3D - which is cheaper but doesn’t appear to be as good, for only £100 less.
I appreciate there are lots of 3D printer manufacturers out there - including Prusa and Creality - but I like the enclosed, working ‘out-of-the-box’ option (a lesson learned from my experiences with the Shapeoko )
It is hard to beat a Prusa in that regard. Even unenclosed, it prints far better than the Flashforge or Makerbots at my university. More similar to the MarkForged ($15k+) printers, and even has some additional features compared to those. An enclosure is needed for difficult filaments such as ABS or some Nylons, but 90% of prints in PLA or PETG are fine unenclosed.
There are also “ready to go” enclosures for Prusa MK3s, you do not need to DIY one
What are you planning on printing?
In my experience, dual extruders aren’t worth it. I’ve converted several dual extruder printers (Creator Pro rebrands) in the schools to single extruder.
I think I would prefer the Prusa, but it’s quite a lot more (unless I go for the Mini) and both of them have to be built - or I could pay even more to have it built for me!
I like the idea of the Ikea ‘enclosure’, though!
So, is the Mini better than either FlashForge machines, then?
Well, I was thinking about hose clamps for dust extraction, hose adapters and maybe a few other bits and pieces, but I’ve just learnt the Mini will be about £400, which is a bit of a shocker!
I have the Prusa i3 because I wanted something that just worked as my first CNC type machine (got it well before the Shapeoko) and I didn’t fancy having to learn how to tune the machine I didn’t know how to use to get it working.
That said, reports from lots of people who know more than me, like this guy
say that the Creality Ender and many others are now pretty good machines too so the entry cost is no longer such a big issue.
Prusa does do some decent QA at their plant in Europe where the mostly Chinese parts are brought together and that’s realistically the difference between cheap useless Chinese product and decent quality Chinese product, the QA checks the parts have to go through. Most things rely on mostly Chinese parts now irrespective of which flag they print on the box (looking at you Swiss watch ‘manufacturers’).
I have a Creality Ender Pro and have had zero issues with it. It’s good printer at a decent price point at least here in the states. I payed under $200 for the machine and it’s already paid for itself in things I have made with it.
I’ve used a number of creality printers, I now own an ender 5 and it has worked perfectly from day 1.
The ender 6 looks very interesting. corexy and TMC-2208 stepper drivers. I probably would have bought it if it had been available when i got the 5.
I hear Prusa quality and support are going to be there day 1. Kinda like going with a shapeoko.
Creality it the value option… is going to be hit and miss, there are risks, but if you are willing to tinker you likely can get a really good device for a lot less money…
Thanks, Jeff. TBH, I’m not really looking to buy any plastic sheets, but found these prices when I searched Google, following Will’s thread on cutting rather than printing the adapters - it was a different supplier, though (www.simplyplastics.com) - but maybe I was looking at the wrong stuff.
i’m still thinking about a 3D printer - probably the Creality Ender 5 Pro, now.