I’ve looked into 3D printers for years now, but the technology always seemed days away from being outdated and I never actually got around to getting one. But I think I’m finally ready to get one and I’m looking for the best I can get for my buck.What I’m looking for in a 3D printerI’m a programmer who frequently works with 3D and am pretty familiar with electronics as well, so I’m not super worried about things being too technical or requiring a bit of tinkering, but still easy to use, especially once I have everything calibrated and setup.My budget isn’t extremely limited, but I’m not looking to spend multiple thousands on a 3D printer that I’ll probably mostly use for hobbying. I’m willing to pay premiums for good quality but don’t need industry quality.Quality > speed. I really want 3D parts that don’t look like 3D printed parts. I really want smooth looking final products.Big print platform. This is important to me. I don’t want to be limited when making solid pieces. Especially if I wanna use this for cosplay stuff. If I wanna make big pieces or armor to cover with Worbla, I wanna be able to print in as few parts as possible.I view a 3D printer as a tool and I like to buy tools that will go above and beyond what my current use case requires, so just assume I’m wanting to print anything, but not in mass quantities.Would like to avoid proprietary parts, but am willing to accept them if they aren’t extremely expensive and actually add something worth having.Want either the software to be really good or compatible with really good software.What I’ve foundSo far, the one that’s peaked my interests have been the Original Prusa i3 MK2 (prebuild, because I rather have my first one just work) and ordering the multi-color upgrade as well. From what I’ve seen it seems to be fairly well liked and open source.So my question is if anyone has this one, what do you guys think? Also, do you have any other recommendations I should try out that you think look into? http://ift.tt/2fzMalV