3d printer advice

I’m looking at getting an XYZ Da Vinci minimaker. Has anyone got anything good/bad to say about it (apart from the fact you have to use NFC enabled rolls of filament)?

thanks

What has led you to this choice?

The mini maker is consider a bit of a toy printer.

For the £130 they go for there are many more open printers that you could start with:

Creality range = v good feedback
Wanhao/Monoprice mini = v good feedback, open filament
Anets = bit dodgy on electronics front, open filament.

The XYZ’s are well supported but in my opinion (having started with a £150 printer and moved up to a £750 printer) there is more to be looked at. You don’t have to use chipped filament with some versions and it is solid enough.

It comes ready built and calibrated, it also has a fairly small footprint.
You can make an arduino based NFC programmer to use other brands of filiament (something I’m not scared of trying)
Initially I only want to print simple items eg an astro-pi case, a base-plate for a Micro:Bit robot (using 9g continuous rotation servos) and wheels for the robot.
Maybe I will then do a Google AIY voice (V1) case.
I think I can do this using the 15cm cubed build volume.

Another printer I’ve been looking at is the ‘Steadytech’ Mini 3D Printer (from Box.co.uk) again its fully built but there are no reviews and its a smaller build volume

One thing on the “ready to print” aspect- when they do break down- it is handy to know how they all go together. The open rail design printers are easier to troubleshoot and fix.

Feel free to come across to the Pimoroni discord server where we have a 3D printing channel btw. https://discord.gg/GFkBfD