the listing

I don’t know enough to know what I don’t know, but the price seems pretty low even for a used 3d printer. Do the pictures or description give any indications?

edit: Thanks to everyone for the replies! I woke up and saw a bunch of messages and was like, “oh crap what did i say this time.”

Prevailing opinion seems to be it’s probably a fair price, but my lack of experience makes it a risky choice.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    It’s been modded, which is always a crapshoot. It could be a stellar printer, or they’re lying, or they think it prints amazballs, but has really low standards. Or it could be even more amazing and their standards are just straight up OCD.

    From what they say, the mods are fairly common for creality printers.

    It’s also super common to mod your printers, especially lower-end brands like reality.

    I would suggest asking if they could do a test print- and give them the filament to do it with. Something like a Benchy won’t take too long, or too much filament. Also if it comes out nice ask for what they used as print settings.

    If it prints well, 150 is a spectacular deal.

    That said, I wouldn’t suggest entering non a used printer. Too many things to go wrong. (I’d also suggest avoiding the lowest end of printers.)

  • Shadow@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    If you’re new to 3d printing, I don’t recommend buying a used budget printer unless you have extreme tolerance for troubleshooting someone else’s problems.

    They’re cheap enough new.

    • PhatalFlaw@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      Agreed, these budget printers are a project in themselves. So if you’re into tinkering/modifying/upgrading it may be in your wheelhouse. If you want to get into 3D printing to pick a print off a website and have it print perfectly every time, this probably won’t be a good printer for you.

      That being said, getting one of these project printers throws you in the deep end, you’ll learn more about 3D printing hardware, and at an incredibly deep level. If you stick with the hobby, everything after the initial learning curve will seem easy

    • philpo@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      As the original link has been taken down and your advice is still very valid just one point I wanted to add: This is valid UNLESS it’s from someone whom you know well enough that they tell you the truth and knows what they are doing - in that case it can be a good idea to buy a used printer from someone who knows what they are doing and who has ironed out the teething problems some machines have and can provide advice if something goes wrong.

      I was luckily enough to do something similar (with my CNC-machine,though. Standard MPCNC,but the friend I got them from is a pro - he designs his own mainboards and stuff - and would have been able to fix some issues myself without him/would have become frustrated) once and was able to help out a friend this way - he got a nice, highly modified but working very well Anycubic (back then one of the most reliable models…) and I got money for the next machine.

      Otherwise: your advice is very valid. I also fucked up in that regard once.