The Best 3D Printer To Buy In 2021 For Under £500!

I’ve done the research so you don’t have to!

Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash

So, you are looking for the perfect hobby printer that will satisfy all your needs! Well, you are in luck because I spent weeks (yes weeks!) researching this and bought and returned countless printers to give you my top opinion on which printer you should buy!

First things first, in this post I am only going to talk about FDM 3D printers which are the most common type of printers that print by extruding plastic layer by layer. This is different from SLA printers which is the second most common type of 3D printers that work by curing resin layer by layer with a UV light.

The reason I want to stick with FDM printers is the fact that they are perfect for hobby use as they are easy to work with, have a large build area and the plastic filament is far cheaper to buy for the average consumer than the more expensive resins that SLA printers use!

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s now talk about the top 3D printer which I recommend you buy for 2021!

And that printer is…

The Artillery Sidewinder X1

Image from Amazon

Let’s go through the specs:

1. This printer packs a huge build volume of 300mm by 300mm by 400mm build area! From complete Iron-man helmets to remote-controlled drones, this printer is literally large enough to print anything you could hope for!
2. This printer has an AC heated bed! This is the most important part of the 3D printer as many cheap printers around this price range do not have this feature! This is because if you don’t have a heated bed, it is very difficult to print in various plastics such as ABS as the printed object will not stick to the build surface and you will have warped corners!
3. This printer has a direct-drive extruder! For those who are new to the 3D printing community or have never heard of such a thing, direct-drive extruders are simply the mechanism part of the printer which pushes the plastic out of the hotend/nozzle. The mechanism on the Sidewinder X1 is very different from the conventional Bowden style extruder which has a long tube that gets fed into the nozzle. This direct-drive mechanism is far better as it has a much faster retraction time meaning that there is a much lower chance of the nozzle getting clogged.
4. This printer has a touch screen with programmable buttons if you really want to mess around with your printer settings! However, out of the box, the printer comes with standard firmware and all the functionality you will ever need when it comes to normal 3D printing uses.
5. This machine is silent! For me, that is a huge selling point as most printers on the market are very noisy meaning if you are thinking of having the printer running in your bedroom at night this would be perfect as it produces hardly any noise at all due to the silent stepper motor drivers!
6. The build quality is excellent! The gantry and the base is built very solidly with almost no vibrations during printing! As well as that, this printer also features dual z-axis stepper motors that are synchronised with a belt which helps tremendously in terms of stabilising the whole structure!
7. The printer comes working out of the box! This may be trivial to first-time buyers but trust me, a lot of printers out there on the market (even established brands like Creality) have issues in terms of assembly and getting it to work the first time! For this printer, the assembly process is simple and quick as I had it up and running 30 minutes after I opened the box!

Overall, this printer is a beast and if you are looking to purchase it in the UK CLICK HERE (affiliate link)!