The New 3D Printing Thread

Hi Drew,

Well I'm glad I could be of help, and I would generally agree an FDM printer such as a Creality Ender is a good choice as they are far more flexible than an SLA/Resin printer. The SLA printers are really better if you want small highly detailed items, such as gaming miniatures where the format really shines. It's not to say you can't use them for larger items and they do have potential for engine/carriage/wagon shells, but the cost of running/ownership can be higher and the post processing is a real pain. So in your case I would probably go for FDM to start with.

Creality is a good choice to start with as well, mainly because it has such a wide user base you will find spare parts (relatively) cheap and freely available. Although some other makers such as Tronxy make nice machines it can be challenging getting spares as they don't have the size of user base that 3rd party component makes want to service as they can make more money from the bigger Creality audience for example. Spares to think about getting in early in case you need them are primarily things like nozzles that are effectively consumables as they do wear out - although not as often as you may think, unless of course you use abrasive type filaments such as the carbon fibre modified PLA's, or wooden PLA's as these sort of things have carbon fibres or wood fibres in the mix that tend to produce more wear on the nozzles. Other things to think about are possibly a spare hot end assembly (these are usually pretty cheap for Creality machines) and boden tubing (thats the tubes/pipes the filament is fed through on a standard FDM machine, unless it uses direct drive).

Anyway have fun and if you do hit any issues ask here and I and the other guys who use 3D printers will surely try to help you