3D Printer, LABISTS Mini Desktop 3D Printer DIY Kit for Beginners Kids Teens with 10M 1.75mm PLA Filament, Magnetic Removable Plate, Printing Size 100 x 100 x 100mm

This is our first foray into 3D printing. This was mostly something to keep the kiddo occupied during the social distancing period. He wanted it, but I was not keen on spending more for something he'd use twice and never touch again (robotics kit, anyone?). This was perfect.It was super easy to assemble and the instructuons were relatively clear. It took us less than an hour to start a test print, which was awful because I didnt have the bed leveled properly. That's on me.So far we are both pretty happy with it, enough so that we are already talking about the upgrade. The print bed really is tiny, a little under 4x4 inches, so don't expect giant masterpieces unless you are prepared to slice and glue them. The slicing software is good (I like Cura better than the labslicer they recommend).Get a roll of filament, because the 10m sample doesn't go far and its not great quality. Be warned that most 1kg spools will not fit on this and you will have a difficult time printing your own holder with a printer this small. Either cut lengths off the spool or get smaller spools.Replacement parts are next to impossible to buy state-side, so keep that in mind as well and take care of your extruder nozzle and magnetic plate. Re-check the bed leveling every so often, or you're going to have a bad time (ask me how I know). It makes pretty good prints: better than I expected, quite frankly.Yes, there are some things to know and keep in mind, but for its price and size, it's a great starting point!

3/26/202 update:The support from this company is very good. If you do your research and email their support you will finally get to the point you should be right out of the box. We had to unscrew and move 4 wires around on our unit just to get it to print correctly. Now that we have the printer up and running correctly, we can begin to enjoy it. We are new to it so I think it will take us sometime to really get good, but the printer is finally printing correctly and we are having fun.One other thing I like to see is that you could get the base plate part as a replacement, because ours with all the issues we had has some plastic stuck on it and we can not get it off.As always I will update this review. 3 stars for the startup and manual, but 5 stars for the support. so I will update my stars to 4 and review again in a month or so after using the unit more.Spent hours trying to get unit to print something then it did and it was nothing.So the manual is good for helping you put the unit together and that is about it. The SD card we got had some issues. The biggest issue is trying to get the unit to print. We tried the rocket and it never printed. We loaded a dog and it started to print, but it wasn't a dog that came out. We will try more tomorrow, but for all the great reviews, I am not recommending this unit right now. If tomorrow it would print like all the reviews say push the arrow button and it prints that would be great. I also don't know why they add the USB cable, because i couldn't see where it would let you direct print to the unit.I print box unit is very ???? because sometimes it works and other times we have to reset the power because it seems to lock up and that is just on the feeding or unfeeding, since we only got it to print one time and it wasn't anything on the sd card.We will see. Got it for my son to start off his 3d printing and now regret I didn't buy a different one around the same price range.Will update if we every get this thing to actually work.I really wish they had a better manual and setup especially of the software and the printing process.So we had lots of issues getting the printer to print correctly, then we got it to print, but it would print our items backwards. I googles a lot about 3d printing and I found they had a tutorial for the Cura software , below is the link I am going to set these setting and see what happens. Make should you scroll all the way down, because I stopped and then reread to find the last page actually has the setting for the printer.file:///D:/3d%20printer/LABISTS%20X1%20Tutorial_%20Get%20started%20with%20Cura%2015.04.6%20for%20Windows%20Users.pdfWe reprint in the next week or two and see how it works. We are totally new to 3d printing and I can say it is easy if you know the setting and the software.... they could have done a better job with a guide to setting up and getting started. I am going to put one together for my sons once I have everything tweaked and correct.Will update again once I see if the setting now work better in Cura. Also the slicer software they proved just called slicer was the one printing everything backwards. It also always defaults to Chinese language and you have to always do the drop down to get English.

While capable of doing the job, the default software is sketchy at best.The printer came with a MicroSD card to transfer files and to provide some readme information about the printer. The SD Card was dead on arrival, did not contain any information, and refused to accept any information to use in the printer.The filament that this came with melts pretty easy at a low temperature, which would be okay if not for their instruction in the event of a clog: Apply more heat! Yes, they suggest that if you're clogged you heat it up *more*, where it just ends up burning and clogging worse.The printer comes with a user's manual; the user's manual isn't translated well.OH, AND DID I MENTION YOU CAN BUY THIS SAME PRINTER UNDER A DIFFERENT BRAND NAME FOR $50 LESS? Yeah. Look up EasyThreed X1 on google.The only, and I repeat only, upside to this printer is that it was easy to assemble.Update: Following this review, the company reached out to me in order to try and remedy some of the problems that resulted in such a negative review. While doing so they were rather polite and showed great concern for maintaining a good record of customer satisfaction. I personally value this, so I'm making a note here that while the product itself likely hasn't changed yet they're at the very least dedicated to a pleasant user experience and given the opportunity they may improve the product or assist others who have problems. I've given them an extra star for it.