I have never 3d printed anything before. These days I’m working on a small home automation project, and I will require some enclosures. So I thought why not buy a 3d printer ? That way I can also learn about 3d printing when I get some time.
Also please suggest an affordable 3d printer.
Depends on your region, but the cheapest no bullshit printer is probably any prusa. Anything cheaper and you have to be able to take apart the frame, manually square up everything, measure your diagonals, etc. If you get an ender or anything that uses the creality electronics you have to make sure that the wires in the screw terminals are not tinned (solder on the ends) and clip them and either put them in bare or crimp ferrules. It’s a potential fire hazard and at least one person has reported experiencing that potential. Plus you end up tinkering, upgrading and tweaking more than printing which probably wastes any money saved by getting a cheaper printer.
Source: I have two ender 3’s and they don’t look like ender 3s any more.
Learn to design in 3d. OnShape.com is a good place to start and free. A 3d printer with nothing to print is a paperweight. Once you can design parts it is an amazing tool.
There’s also thingiverse.com and it’s cousins that give you plenty of things to print while you learn.
I started with a cheap, terrible Anet A8 knockoff. It was probably $300. It took a lot of tinkering to get it to print, and a lot of tinkering to get it to finish successfully. But I learned a lot in that time, so I wouldn’t call it a complete waste. But really, don’t buy one of those. They’re cheap for a reason.
My replacement printer is a Prusa MK3, plus an upgrade package, I think it’s an MK3S now. I wasn’t prepared for how easy it was to get this one to work. It’s extremely rare that I get a failed print. I just fired it up again last weekend after about a year of not being used, and all I did was change the nozzle and run a bed-level check. Boom, perfect print.
Accept failures, learn. Have fun!
