I've been wanting a 3D printer for years. I'm planning on remodeling the garage with a new workbench, painted floor and organize my tools. Do you have an recommendations on a resin 3D printer? I just want a good quality machine for a beginner.
Honestly, my suggestion would be to learn from my mistake and start with FDM first.
Resin has a lot of advantages when it comes to fine detail but you'll find yourself limited almost entirely to only ornamental objects going that route. You're dealing with toxic chemicals that you're not supposed to touch and you'll have to wear a mask when working with plus plan on ventilation for where you use, you have to go through a wash and post-printing curing process with every piece and you can't just flush the alcohol and other liquids used in that process down the drain. Being careful not to tear or puncture the FEP, replacing the FEP, getting your print to not stick to the FEP - none of it's impossible but as a beginner, it's a little daunting. You're not even supposed to have skin contact with the materials until they've been fully cured. Even the resin you see that's labeled "water washable" results in water you have to go to lengths to properly dispose of.
You'll need to consider slicing and figuring out strategies to drain liquid resin from the cavities of prints how to get light into those cavities to ensure the insides are properly cured along with unintuitive infill and things like the effects of not just gravity but tension and other forces while printing when placing supports because these delicate pieces are constantly getting ripped from the FEP and pulled through a liquid with the consistency of whole milk - there's just a lot to it for first starting out and if I'd had it all to do over again, I'd have started with FDM and then gotten into resin instead of the other way around.
I went that route first because at the time, FDM print quality was just nowhere remotely close and those machines were largely janky project kit builds with exposed wiring all over the place that people always had to struggle to maintain unless they were willing to drop money on a Prusa out of the gate which when you're just seeing if you even like the hobby, is a lot.
But thanks largely to one manufacturer bringing high-end features previously only found in commercial printers to relatively cheap prosumer and then consumer printers and focusing on quality and ease of use and then everyone else in the industry basically copying them, FDM is SO much easier these days with hugely improved quality and much more versatile results with a whole variety of materials that range from flexible TPU to PLAs with wood in them all the way up to carbon fiber.
Even if you're thinking all you want to do is make Warhamer figures, I'd suggest an A1 mini with the AMS lite as a good cheap first printer. Stick a 2mm print head and marvel at how good the detail can be, how cheap the material is, how easy the cleanup on the model is and how having the piece fall off the edge of a table won't usually do it any harm.
Having said that, I've mostly gone Elegoo with my resin hardware because they were one of the first to offer higher quality at lower prices. Between the main brands, the difference usually comes down to actual printer specs - volume of the printable area and the resolution of the screen for the most important aspects. There are some things people prefer such as the leveling or mounting process for one print bed vs. another but they all generally require the use of the same one or two software slicers out there since one slicer company controls the market on the controller boards inside almost all of the consumer/hobby level resin printers.
If you have an idea that you might want to print slightly large resin, I'd suggest any of the Elegoo Saturn line. You'll find that most complex pieces made by others are already designed in parts for assembly after printing in order to pull off the finished shapes so you probably don't need as big of a print bed as you might first imagine when using other's designs and you'll quickly discover the benefits of that yourself if you're interested in designing your own pieces.
These days I have a Mars Pro and the original all metal enclosure Jupiter (only thing I've ever gotten delivered in an actual wooden crate) and then also an Anycubic 10k for extra fine detail that doesn't have a huge print bed area. Personally, I find that the larger you go with resin printers, the more hassle every aspect of it becomes - you are dealing with a larger heavier bed, you're needing to load more chemical, cleanup of everything takes longer - both the hardware and the print. You have to consider your post-processing options for larger prints with containers, and solvents and such. The Saturn line is a good middle-ground between size and hassle.
Not to beat a dead horse but I tried FDM about a year after I started with resin and even with the lesser quality results and janky quality of the hardware, I found I used it WAY more just because there was no mess to deal with and for the most part, post processing all depends on how much you want to do for quality with no consideration of what you have to do to make it safe... and in general, there are a lot more interesting things you can do with that process and materials.
Fumes with certain materials require ventilation but the most common beginner ones, PLA and PTEG, are supposed to be safe.
I've been through a number of FDM printers over the years and today am solidly a Bambu Lab fan-boy. There are people that don't like them for a variety of reasons (some legit and some, IMO, not) but none of those reasons have to do with ease of use or the quality of the results.
If you have any questions or want any more info on any of this, hit me up with a DM and I'll be more than happy to share anything I know and any experience I have.
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