Printer Recommendation

Modern 3D printers have made several advances over the last few years. As of 2025 here are some recommended Features based on my personal opinion.

Auto Bed Leveling (ABL).

• Consistant Z-offset distance between the nozzle and build surface
• Bed Mesh Compensation

  All build surfaces have veration in hight over the entire surface. The printer uses the probe to map those differances. The printer then activly adjusts the nozzle height acordingly over the bottom surface durring the print.

Enclosed vs Open :

• Encloded Printers are recomended for most materals other than PLA and PETG
• Printing PLA with and enclosed printer at too high temperatures may result in a clogged heatbreak.

Direct Drive Extruder:

• Shorter Filiment path more acurate extrusion
• Highly recomded for flexable materals

Extended Features

Input Shaper

Input Spapper / vibration compencation is a firmware utility where the 3d printer oscillates the x and y axis at diferent frequentcies. The resulting information is used to provide counter frequencys when priinting to increase print speed and quality.

Presure Advance

Pressure Advance is a firmware / slicer tool that calibrates the amount of materal that is extruded after the extruder stops pushing the filiment. This increases the acuracy of the extruded line width.

Air Filtration

3d printed materal of all verieties release gases when extruded. Some of thise gases in suffichient quantities can irritate the sinuses of people exposed to large amounts. Some 3d printer come equipted with carbon filters. Normally this is not a isue in larger spaced that are well ventilated. However materals like ASA an ABS may have an unpleasent oder.

Heated Chanber

Only Nessessary for higher temp engenering materaly, however it can be bennificial for noremal materals.

Wifi or LAN internet connection

These printers often have the ability to send , start, monitor and stop 3d print jobs from a device such as a computer or smartphone. This is a quality of life improvment and the ability to stop a failed print remmotly can save mechanical damage.

Printer size

This is dependent on use case:

note : A full size 3d printed helment that has not been seperated into parts requires greater that 250 mm on average.