Best 3d Printer to buy next  

That rather depends on what you want to print: steel, concrete, chocolate?  And what you want to use your prints for:  Probably the best I know of is -

Cheerio,

RE: Best 3d Printer to buy next

would love to have one of those, hope they name there next rocket after the Zerg's

but I am just looking for a desktop printer

few printing tech I have not tried and was thinking about was,  a full color fdm printer if there are any, Resin based printer that is not in the 1000's, largest bed printer, maybe even a multicolor switching system that is different then then mmu2s, even printers with multi-tool changing system(additive/subtractive), or a cnc even, or a combo cnc/printer...….many options 

RE: Best 3d Printer to buy next

For true multimaterial without huge material waste for I would wait for the Prusa XL, which can not only do 5 colour prints with little to no waste but also true multimaterial and soluble support without little to no waste and no contamination issues. (The E3D tool changer would be the only alternative but it is probably a much rougher product, more a development platform than an "out of the box"-printer)

For tabletop game figures and fine delicate detailed stuff I would look towards resin printing. Go cheap or rather upscale (for the hobby market) but I would avoid those Chinese printers which force you into the shady Chitubox environment unless you know the risks and are fine with them. In terms of printing quality most of them should be at least decent. Not sure if you can find that below a thousand EUR but maybe you can.

For multicolour switching systems you can either go for the rather pricy Mosaic system or if you dare to venture into the Voron environment you can have a look at the probably considerably cheaper enraged rabbit system, which is also designed to be able to handle more colours than the MMU (of course without elminating the colour change waste issue). You don't need a Voron for that btw. You can also convert other printers for example by exchanging the extruder to an Afterburner, and the electronics to a Klipper based system. But at that point you might just as well build a Voron Trident or Switchwire from scratch I suppose.

If you want some combi-system (which won't excell at either category but could be usable at least for all of them.) I heard the Snapmaker is fairly ok, even if not the cheapest option out there.

RE: Best 3d Printer to buy next

I picked up an Ultimaker S5 about a year ago and it's a fine machine.  The general design is similar to the Prusa XL.  I didn't really go looking for this, it kinda found me, and at a price I could not refuse.

True dual extruder and solid.  It's not quite 'you press the button, it does the rest' but approaching it.

That's the good news.  The bad news is that the list price is in the 5 kilobuck range!

If you can find a deal on one, snatch it up.  I picked it up from a mom-n-pop shop about 120 miles away and drove it back.

RE: Best 3d Printer to buy next

^^ What I am wondering with those (don't know them very well), do they have a cantilevered print bed? That bed is pretty large and I thought good printers should rather avoid such a design at that size. Isn't that a problem or are cantilevered printbeds more common than I thought at pricier machines?

RE: Best 3d Printer to buy next

Yes, it is cantilevered, but it is very solid.