I think you can save a bunch of money not getting a bamboo. Lol
Bamboo is like the iPhone. You pay way more for less tech, but it’s idiot proofed. Meanwhile there are lots of androids with better cameras, better this that or the other.
The qidi Ryan mentioned is good. Fb has people selling their Flashforge Adventurer 5M for peanuts these days and it’s arguably the best bang for your buck out there.
If you go the used AD5M route, remember that they’re only $249 new on Amazon… I wouldn’t spend more than about half that for a used one that’s shown to be working correctly. They’re either great printers (or junk if they’ve been abused).
where have you sourced most parts in Nz from , i seem to end up down rabbit holes when searching here
PM me and we can discuss. wakefield metals for stainless pipes, elecrow for jackpot, ali for most of the other parts, taobao via mail forwarder for the makita clone. aluminum plates self cut on another cnc. aluminum sheet from scrap metal place in auckland
cheaper H2S with heated chamber and second nozzle for supports if you want a bamboo or qidi for less than half of that. if your budget is tight bamboo is not worth it except the A series
most of the printers now produce more or less the same quality parts from basic materials. some a little bit faster and with less tinkering.
LR4 parts are designed so great so they will work even being printed on the crappiest printer with no calibration. Those parts are one of the most simplest ones to print.
I do not see much point paying for all that weird nozzle changing thing. but i only ever print functional parts
Kind of, but a crooked core isn’t great. 
my bad , thought you had found parts in NZ, i source most thing on ali also , i brought a nordic 710w router from topmaq $170 bucks, suprised how well it has worked at that price , just brought another one for next build
adding to this i down sized from 3.1 m to 2.4 , i just left Y belt full length, mark on belt where my 2.4 and 3m marks are the rest of table extension clips on end, I have a 2nd y rail , takes no longer than 15 min to up size or down size
This! I have downsized my machine from 49in x 100in to a 600mm x 950mm. I haven’t designed the extension yet, but my plan is to have an extended y for things like flattening rough sawn wood. There is also ways to work on one end of a part, move the workpiece and continue. So the length is almost infinite as long as you can keep feeding the piece through. I’m against a wall, so i can use double double y and that’s about it workout moving it or building the extension. But there are ways.
I’ll say this as well…. i was worried that shrinking my machine would hinder my ability to do stuff like cabinets. It did, but a few simple design tweaks to the cabinet and it fits fine.
Really you just need to build it and get used to using it. The tricks and such will come with experience.
Units, brother, Units 
You mean everyone doesn’t understand me when I switch between imperial, metric, and cubits? Lol
I prefer to use fathoms.
Underwater cnc?
Freedom Eagle Units.
There are two yards (6 feet) in an imperial fathom.[1] Originally the span of a man’s outstretched arms, the size of a fathom has varied slightly depending on whether it was defined as a thousandth of an (Admiralty) nautical mile or as a multiple of the imperial yard. Formerly, the term was used for any of several units of length varying around 5–5+1⁄2 feet (1.5–1.7 m).
That’s a variant of a unit I use regularly with my team even these days… One JWS.
(One Jimmy Wing Span).
It’s a term of art around here.
So I spent the day watching printer videos while babysitting Claude at my day job, and I don’t think I need multi nozzle stuff. I do like the idea of Bambu, because I don’t want futzing with the printer to be a time suck. But I hate their owned ecosystem.
I think a H2S might be an ok choice.
I also like the idea of the Qidi. For most of what I want to do, it would do the job. What I am curious about is the overhead time cost for it being less plug and play. Also, it seems that the print quality may be a little lower, especially for multicolor prints. This will be a lesser used aspect, but I also have to keep the wife happy.
I am definitely thinking single nozzle is fine. The waste in multi color printing should be low as I don’t expect to do a ton of it.
I’m not interested in used. The hard top end of the budget is currently $1500. That’s what I have in wife approved funds.
Also, I am concerned with venting. I think I’ll have to put this in the basement and vent with a dryer vent. We’re both chemically sensitive. Do either of them do ok without an external vent?
is 1500 for a printer + lowrider ? you can fit a qidi and a LR4 in it.
I’d recommend to allocate more budget for the cnc then the printer. a laser module for cnc and a touch probe is much more useful then a fancier printer.
i you are worried about bamboo ecosystem do not buy them. their ecosystem is their main “benefit“. they make good hardware but they are completely closed and not nice to their customers. just like apple
mastering a printer is easier then a cnc so you’ll be fine with qidi
if you not printing abs all the time then venting is not that important in my view.
pla and petg are not too bad just dont put it in your bedroom and run it 24x7 and you’ll be fine
There are also charcoal vents that work well for closed printers if that is an issue for you. If it’s going to be in the basement and not in normal living spaces then a charcoal filter system should suffice.