Best 3D printer recommendation (budget: $1K)

+1 for Prusa. I don't think you'd regret it.

As an activity, 3d printing involves "part design", "printing" and "3d printer tuning and maintenance".

I've used a Wanhao D6 and a couple flavours of CR10. I also have 3 Prusa minis and a friend with MK3S. The Prusas require the least "fettling" of any consumer level printer I've come across. They just pump out parts with minimal supervision.

My non-Prusa printers are all "for parts" now because I found myself spending more time on printer maintenance and modification than making useful things. I do keep a CR10-S5 around because I enjoy tinkering sometimes and it can be fun to make giant things.

There are plenty of great FDM printers on the market right now (Ender 5, CR10s Pro v2) which are not far off, but at your budget I think the MK3S is still the best choice.

I bought the Creality Ender 3, then the Prusa Mini. Both will eventually print out excellent objects if you are patient enough.

I totally recommend the Prusa though, for the following reasons:

- Prusa has better safety features, making it much less likely that the printer will burst into flames. The Creality actually does not ship with key safety features, you have to flash in an update to make that happen.

- The Prusa has automatic bed levelling, which doesn’t sound like a big deal but is an epic hassle to do it all the time. The Prusa also has MESH levelling, which takes into account the warping of the print bed, which is impossible on an Ender.

As for the printer, ender3 and ender5 are good budget buys, if you add a ABL sensor it's as good as prusa if not better while I'd argue my ender5 prints better than my prusa.

Here is the filament extruder I built:

https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...

You might find this interesting as many people end up spending thousands of dollars in filament and lots of wasted printed parts as getting accurate part takes several attempts.

I'm of the opinion that it's a tool and you should buy the cheapest tool; if you use it enough that it breaks, you buy a better tool. That being said, I recommend the Ender 3 Pro, to avoid cheap PSU fires. It's good enough for a beginner and dimensionally accurate enough for the work you seem to be doing. Octoprint hooks in just fine via USB, I've got it running on a Cubieboard2 even.

For FDP, Prusa is the way to go.

SLA printers also look promising, but I have zero experience with them.

If you’re just starting 3D printing, don’t choose a delta printer. I’ve got one and even after spending endless hours on calibration, I never got it to print precise dimensions.

buy a prusa mk3s, use it to print all the fancy upgrade parts[0], and have a blast.

By far the cheapest printer to get 'dead-nuts' precise. There are better options, but they are all more expensive.

[0]: https://www.thingiverse.com/jltx/collections/taurus-for-mk3 lots of other options out there, but these designs are tried-and-true.

based on my research, prusa seems to be the best with that budget.