3D Printer for Gun Build

[Gun1]

Lately I've been hearing a lot of praise for the Ender 3 3D printer. However, I really don't want to buy my 3D printer from a chinese company. Does anyone know of any good 3D printers for gun builds similar to an Ender but not form a chinese company?

 

[WestKentucky]

The ender is a ripoff of a Prusa design. I have the rip-off of the rip-off. For essentially the same printer you can spend $180, 300, or buy Prusa for a grand.

https://www.prusa3d.com/product/original-prusa-i3-mk3s-kit-3/

 

[Gun1]

The ender is a ripoff of a Prusa design. I have the rip-off of the rip-off. For essentially the same printer you can spend $180, 300, or buy Prusa for a grand.

https://www.prusa3d.com/product/original-prusa-i3-mk3s-kit-3/

Is Prusa a US company?

 

[WestKentucky]

Is Prusa a US company?

Nope. Czech. But it’s not Chinese.

 

[Gun1]

Nope. Czech. But it’s not Chinese.

Works for me, Lol.
Any more affordable non-chinese options?

 

[WestKentucky]

Works for me, Lol.
Any more affordable non-chinese options?

There’s a huge step from Chinese to not. I went knockoff of knockoff and figured they aren’t making very much in their race to the bottom. My next printer will be made of printed parts and off the shelf bits like a direct drive extruder.

I would say your best bet is to filter through the brands sold at the link below and see where you end up. It’s the best variety and price combo out there aside from Amazon, but they run sales constantly so be patient and score.
https://www.3dprintersonlinestore.com/

 

[Gun1]

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. Which of these brands are non-chinese?

 

[Millersville]

There are a few pictures below of a 22 rimfire box my son printed on his Ender, think the file came of Thingiverse.com. The last was a print using an Elegoo printers in photopolymer resin. The body on this one has fully articulating segments and is very neat, for resolution you can not beat SLA printers, but the material tends to be very brittle.

 

[Millersville]

I would also add that most 3D prints are not particularly strong, I like them for building some tooling and prototyping, but for real strong parts they have their limitations unless you start getting into the expensive SLS type printers.

 

[mgmorden]

Even though Prusa is a Czech company, most of the parts in it are still going to come from China.

Realistically most of the parts in these machines aren't really made anywhere else.

Also if you are really adventurous the Prusa design is open source so you can build a lot of if at home. I doubt you'll be able to get around buying at least SOME Chinese parts (namely stepper motors, stepper motor drivers, and the logic boards to control it), but for the plain hardware and frame you could probably avoid them (hell the main frame on a Prusa can be cut out of plywood).

Thomas Sanladerer does a video series where he builds such a clone: