I have ZERO experience with 3D printers. I am looking at buying the Bamboo A1, however before pulling the trigger, I thought I would as you experts which is the best out of the box plug it in and start printing all those cool extra parts being shared for the LR 4. Or maybe such a perfect scenario does not exist yet?
Buying a 3D printer is much like buying a car. The answer is almost always going to be ‘it depends’ 
The Bambu isn’t a bad choice.
Doug has good things to say about flashforge
Best 3D printer I ever *bought* is also best deal + Klipper thoughts (Flashforge AD5M)
I and others have Prusa printers.
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Any one of them could be fairly said to be relieable and easy to get good prints from without too much trouble,
Any one of them can also get blocked, have faults, have failed prints - no one is immune from than and anyone who says otherwise… I would be sceptical of.
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I’ve heard really good things about quidi as well.
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The question is of course - not whether but how long will it be between those things happening.
My own experience is that the better the printer, the fewer interruptions to printing! At the extreme bottom of the scale, my son-in-law has a machine that will not for the life of us get past the first layer of anything he tries to print. That machine is pretty much on it’s way to the parts bin.
On the other hand I’m about to crack 1000 hours with no failure - zero. That is also a little bit due to me being particularly careful about bed cleaning, and designing stuff for ease of printing, but a lot has to be due to Mr Prusa’s engineers. (I have no reason to think that the performance of a Bambu are going to be much different in the short term at least).
I think that those two are pretty much the only two brands that offer true plug and play at the moment.
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We basically have the same topic here:
Might want to check that out before we do it again. 
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They are running a black Friday deal for the regular ad5m+enclosure for 280.
The Bambulabs A1 specially with the AMS must be sweet!
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As a 3D Printing User since 15 years i say for a beginner get the A1.
3D Printing has never been so easy to start with since Bambu lab came out with there machines.
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So buying a printer used to be simple, they were all the same (for the most part).,
Now it is much like buying a car, how many bells and whistles do you want!
It varies by what you want to do when you get it also. You want to open it and have it mostly put together, or do you want to assemble it.
Sooooo many possibilities.
and what are you using it for, aka how big do you need it. What are you going to print.
I can go on. Take a look we all have our preferences here in the forums.
I to this day like simple, so i have an ender and an ender clone. Now, I have done much work on BOTH to get them where I want them.
Bambu, open and use, for the most part.
Ender, put together. (Now they have some that are open and mostly use.)
These are just a few options. Myself, I was never much a fan of the price of Prusa, but they are a very good printer.
I have heard great things about Biqu Hurakan it comes ready with Klipper from day one.
Now that I have really muddied the waters for you, I guess I will end.
For others to help, you really should indicate your comfort level with printers and pricepoint. Those 2 things will help to get you on a Great start!
Have fun!
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So - the first few things to decide are:
- Budget.
- Are you willing to build (you’re not - so check).
- Do you need to enclose it? If you need to place the printer in areas where it may catch drafts from air conditioning, or if you will print higher temperature materials you might need this.
- Will you be printing very tall, skinny models. A bed-slinger (where the bed moves back and forth in one direction) means the the model has to move and has the potential to wobble.
- How big are the models you intend to print.
I’m sure there’s a bunch more. Once you “rank” your answers you could start to decide on the tradeoffs. Several suggestions here are meant to propose models that might work around some of the tradeoffs. Bambu and Prusa are two that I recommend to folks that want to get into it because I trust them to have a good printing experience. But you do pay a bit more for the niceties and tuning.
Bambu is known for walking the line on closed source versus open source licensing. Basically a company the counts on work from the open source community that they roll into their products in a more closed source way. (This may not matter to you at all.). But by all accounts they make a great product. I haven’t heard things about Prusa recently, but I know that the designs are well loved.
With your build expertise, I feel like I should mention the MD3DP. You now “know a guy.” Ryan is great about supporting the builds there too. And - you could cut some of the parts on your LR4 to improve the MD3DP while you print things to improve the LR4.
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That is a nice way of saying they are ripping the competition off and then walling off their changes. 
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Very helpful responses (and I did read up on the other forum topics as suggested).
So to rank my needs/wants/desires
- Budget - no more than I need to spend (my laser machine ran $1,400)
- Build - rather have out of the box ready
- Printer would probably be better with some sort of enclosure - plan on it being in insulated office off garage (no central heat/air - but floor models of both)
- Size of Prints - likely depends on what Ryan and company makes next.
Ideally, it would be nice to be able to print the parts I actually design and manufacture, they are SLA printed classic car instrument panels…. Longest is roughly 22” x 6” x 1” but these need to be one-piece and very smooth with little to no post production before paint.
So I would be happy with a printer that was not a bed-slinger yet large enough to print anything Ryan may design and I would like to be able to print functional strong parts that hold up to the elements. Exterior car parts would be a good description.
Here is my latest item, an SLA printed 1964-66 specific GMC pickup truck instrument panel that accepts 6 modern gauges.
One day I will have my commercial SLA (those are 22” long) but for now I would settle for out of the box ready to print FDM to make the addons for LR4 CNC. 
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I’d preorder the Core One then. It looks brilliant.
You want the eierlegende Wollmilchsau, eh? 
A printer that large for a little money does not exist. If you want that size with a brilliant quality take a few of those bills with a lot of 0000s…
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Precisely why I said “someday“. Lol 
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I recently went through this process. This is my opinion and experience but YMMV. I see a lot of valid opinions here but ultimately price plays a big factor. I don’t think the Bambu A1 is a bad choice.
I started out with an Ender 3 back in 2020 but you definitely don’t want to start there.
A couple months ago, I purchased a Flashforge AD5M. I had a couple issues with it stopping in the middle of a print. I changed a slicer setting and could no longer reproduce. Then I got a clogged nozzle that I couldn’t get unclogged. Replacement nozzles for that are $40 so I just returned it. Note that clogged nozzles can happen on any printer. This printer is on sale now for $280. That does not have an enclosure, you can DIY one, or get the Pro version for $450. Very minimal assembly required.
I personally wanted an enclosure and ended up buying a Bambu P1S with the AMS for auto-color changing. This is on sale right now for $750. You can get this without the AMS for $550. I’ve only had it a few weeks but have been very happy with it. I’m not that into multi-color prints, but just switching between spools automatically is very convenient. It looks like an appliance. Very minimal assembly required.
If money was not a concern, I would have bought a Prusa but I just can’t justify the price. The new Core One sounds great, but assembled it’s $1200 without the multi-material system. The MK4S assembled is $1100 without the multi-material system or an enclosure. It’s $277 for their enclosure kit or you can DIY one. You can save $250-300 by getting the kit you assemble yourself, but that’s a project.
There’s a guy you should connect with in the 3D printing community who operates “Luke’s Laboratory.”
He builds and sells a line of printers that can be customized, and he designs specifically for machines that are fast enough, and capable enough for production. I have no idea if you could get the quality you needed, but I’m pretty sure he could design something to meet your size requirements.
Even the Ratrig Vcore 4 500mm would require you to place your part diagonally, but could potentially accommodate that dimension. The primary problem with trying to buy something pre-built is that the 500mm version doesn’t fit through residential doors in the US. So you would definitely be limited to your garage.
Also - I bet the MP3DP community could help design something purpose built. Those are super cool.
But in the meantime, I second the Prusa Core recommendation. Likely, if I hadn’t just built my Vcore 4, I would have invested in a Prusa Core.
For super cool possibilities that are down the road a ways for development. Check out ASMBL (Additive Subtractive Manufacturing by Layer.) I wonder if you approached it from your specific use case, if you could design an IDEX MD3DP with a head for printing PEEK-CF or something similar with an ASMBL tool to come in a refine the outer profile.
Could be an interesting journey/rabbit hole… 
.
And back to our regularly scheduled programming. Thumbs up for Prusa Core.
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for 22" you may want something like this.
I am very surprised at this price.
now, for what you are printing it would take alot of support, but it would work.
I am NOT recommending this printer, as I am not familiar with it, just saying it would be best for tall parts.
Just stumbled upon this…. Was thinking AD5 or Bambu but now will considering maybe prusa core one as I just found this at same time y’all mentioned it. Might be ‘meant to be’.
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Note that the Prusa Core One doesn’t start shipping until January.
I just finished reading up on the Core One… I probably would have pulled the trigger today… except the small print bed size. In my mind, I imagined such a great sounding printer would have had a larger print bed… or am I being unreasonable due to my lack of knowledge with 3d printers?
Cost and capability seem to follow along with roughly bed size squared.
A really good printer with 300mm x 300mm bed is difficult. a 450mm x 450mm bed is exceptionally difficult to get working right.
The Core One at 250x220 seems to be in about the sweet spot for what most makers do. That is not surprising because Prusa does do its’ market research and machine tradeoffs fairly well.
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