Christmas buying advice?

Does she like to tinker and engineer for hours? Then an ender like printer is golden and cheap. Does she just like to print by pressing 3 buttons and not work with the printer but the prints then there are out of the box printers for that as well. Really depends. Does she want insane speed? Corexy also exists. Theres a printer for every use.

Sovol SV06 or the bigger Sovol SV06 Plus Well, within the budget

Honestly, unless you know what you are getting into don't go with an ender 3. You might be able to get a used Prusa for that price and you will be way happier.

So for the 2-300 range and ender 3 might be the best bang for the buck.

But talk with her, make sure it’s what she wants. Alternatively if there’s one near you, a microcenter giftcard (they have a maker department with 3d printers) could go a long way to that. Alternatively, offering to contribute to it in some way.

3d printers are kind of one of those things that make bad surprise gifts. Even high end things that “work out of the box”, are not a minor time investment/learning curve for someone who wasn’t thinking about getting one.

It’s like kitchen appliances for non cooks, right?

ender 3s are projects, the require constat tuning and adjustments to make sure their print quality is good

like half the time I use mine I have to adjust bed spring and the z axis v-rollers because they get stuck and make the x axis not parallel to the bed

I own and have owned precisely one (1) 3D printer, and that's the Qidi X-Plus. I notice there's now a new version, the "X-Plus 2," but I'm not entirely clear on what the difference is. I can recommend it.

Anyhow, I did a lot of reading on various Ender and Prusa models, and their various clones and the impression I got at the time was that it's a bunch of tweak this, tune that, did you calibrate your e-steps, and so on and so forth. The Qidi, conversely, has been basically plug and play for me. In addition to already coming built into an enclosure, it comes with two extruder heads, one for low temp filaments (PLA, PETG, etc.) and another for high temp stuff (ABS, polycarb, nylon). And basically all I had to do with it was take it out of the box, unclip all the binder clips holding the belts for shipping, perform the bed leveling and z-height adjustment steps (the procedures are built into the printer) and slap filament in it.

It's been chugging away flawlessly for me for going on two years now, though who knows how many spools of filament, and hasn't given me any problems I did not cause myself by being a dumbass and/or a newb.

Full disclosure: Qidi is obviously a Chinese company so you don't get much product support and what you do get is in Engrish, and their web site is pretty jank. I think their printers are clones of the Replicator models, but at a lower price? Or at least their earlier models are. Don't expect a lot of after care from these guys, but then again I haven't needed it. I recommend buying your printer from a reputable seller or even Amazon in case it all goes tits up; at least then you could return it. There is basically zero aftermarket support for these things, unlike the more popular platforms, but again I haven't needed to buy anything but filament and nozzles, and the nozzles are normal M7 MK10 style ones. The belts seem easy enough to replace with commodity parts, and I don't know what else in there you might consume unless you have a massive technical catastrophe of some description.

The e3v3 looks like they at least corrected the major e3 issues, dual screws and abl out of the box. Looks like they're cheap on Amazon now too, I'd imagine microcenter has them at the same price. I'd avoid any of the "lesser" ender 3 models at this point unless you're really in a money crunch and absolutely love replacing/ upgrading parts. I do know the Sovol SV06 has a lot of followers and they do come highly recommended in roughly the same price point.

If she's mainly going to be making cosplay stuff, make sure the build volume is adequate, or she'll have to learn more advanced techniques for making parts in multiple pieces. I'd also recommend buying ANY Creality printer from someplace you can return/exchange it, their QC is all over the map.

whatever you do don't get a Creality K1.

First one had a 10deg bend in the frame, the replacement had a bed leveling sensor issue that ruined my bed and fused my heatsink and heatbreak.

There are no replacement heat sinks available, so now I have a $700 paper-weight until they finally reply to my email.

I was a Creality fan boy until this, NEVER AGAIN. Thinking I'll go to Bambu

Anything else but an Ender 3. I’ve spent more time tinkering with the thing than I have printing

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From what I've heard the Bambu Lab A1 mini is a great option for if you want to just print and not have a lot of maintenance. The version without the AMS is $299 and the AMS can be a separate upgrade down the road to enable multi-material prints.

Ender 3 v3 SE.

That's basically an Ender 3 with all important upgrades and tweaks from the factory.

This has received pretty good reviews in total.

For a easy set up 'no tinker' solution look into the Elegoo Neptune 4.