FDM vs Resin - 2024 What Should You Buy?

I will conduct a comprehensive comparison of resin 3D printers and FDM printers, evaluating ten distinct aspects to ascertain which is more apt for your requirements. For each category, a winner will be announced. Following this, I will provide Amazon affiliate links for my recommended printers, encompassing both FDM and resin types. You can be confident that these recommendations are reliable options. Moreover, I will reveal my top selections for wash and cure stations, along with my favored resins.

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:20 Print Quality and Detail
0:50 Better Surface Finish
1:10 Ability to print small Objects
1:40 Strength and Durability
2:15 Safety
2:55 Cost to Operate
3:25 Ease of Use
4:00 Speed of Print
4:45 Material Variety
5:30 Environmental Impact
6:05 Why I Use what I Use
8:30 Outro

Top Resin Printers:

Top FDM Printers -
Bambu Lab - all of their printers are good but not available on Amazon.

Wash and Cure Stations:

Resins that I Use:

Big shout out to @AimToHeadOfficial for creating such awesome tunes! I’ve included a short bit of one of their awesome song in this video. Thank you guys for all you do, keep up the awesome work, and if anyone watching hasn’t checked out their channel please do so, link below.

#3dprinting #resin3dprinter #resin3dprinting #diy #diycrafts #creality #fdm @DIYCOOLSTUFF

[somus]

My advice would be: If you're printing figures or anything like that with a lot of detail pick resin, if you need strong machine parts with not a lot of detail like gearts and such go fdm.

[DJJuxtapose]

Good vid, man. I think once Resin becomes a bit more user friendly then I'll be in. I'm running a Bambu Labs (3rd printer after an Elegoo and Flashforge with a lot of manual work involved) and that's the closest you're gonna get to a set-and-forget print experience. But you're right, you just won't get the fine detail you'll get from a resin print.
Much like FDM, Resin printers are getting more and more accessible every day, so I'll jump in at that point!

[StillBurningStudios]

Personally I own both an fdm and resin printer, and my stance on what’s better has a few points:

for starters, I live in PA. I keep my resin printer in my basement due to the oder and general mess (I keep my paints/air brush and all my that down there too). Because of that, I’ve found I have some issues printing during the colder months (November - April/may) so I have some restrictions on when I can use it just because my basement is cooler than the rest of the house. Whereas my FDM I can use just about any time, regardless of the temps. I have an Elegoo Neptune 4 max and that 16x16 build plate just lets me do so much at once. I’m working on a statue of d4’s Lilith that will stand at about 27” (base/figure). While I can break it all up and get it done in resin, that’s absolute abhorrent amount of cutting stl’s to fit on the my Mono X and then afterwards I have to piece it all back together, fill in areas of it connecting, it’s just a lot of extra work for a product of similar quality.

There’s also the argument on failed prints. Just due to sheer fear of breaking the tablet screen I empty my vat between prints. I don’t have to worry about that with fdm. Bed’s clean? Nozzle is clear? Let’s do this. That’s not to say fdm can’t fail and create a hot end killing clog, but even then a new hot end would be around $45 and a new tablet is $130.

I also have a bunch of my prints around my work area at my job. Where I have the belief in that if someone ends up swiping one of them I’ve lost like a couple bucks in filament vs like half a bottle of resin.

However, I will give resin a point of being damn near silent. My Cr10s and now N4 Max both have a similar trend of just being generally kinda noisy with both fans and stepper motors. I leave my resin printer go, I honestly forget that it was on. I turn on my fdm printer (which I keep in a guest bedroom) and I can just barely hear it through the floors into the rest of the house.

I still use both printers, but I stick to my fdm mostly now.

[BrunodeSouzaLino]

One point of contention for resin printers as well is that you may not be completely safe from the resin just because it's not touching your skin directly. There have been many resin artists commenting about health issues related to them working with resin for many years. One of the things which also greatly slows down development of Resin printers is pretty much all Resin printers come from the same manufacturer and use the same board and parts which are all proprietary. The same goes for the resin formulations.

[JeremyDenton]

I think you need to demonstrate each of these categories by showing the results of both printers. So that we can see for ourselves.

[darkairlord]

Honestly if you use a .2 nozzle and get your settings right you can make a filament mini that looks just as good as resin.

[DS-pkeh]

For me, resin is no go, as I live in apartment and have a pet, so I am afraid that it will be too toxic.
I can not modify window for aeration so it is tough. If there was a resin that is not toxic (I can live with some bad smell), it would be revolution.

[marcelomendonca]

Dude, invest in some better audio quality for the videos! Nice video though!

[MrKiar]

Im going to be complete honest, people keep making all kind of holders (cable/cup/pen/etc) and beg for its material cost and print time. Most of 3D print owners are lack of purpose and the skill to draw. 90% of so-called functional 3D print are try-hard replicas of injection molding which is rather common in FDM user community.

A single batch of figures printed in 3 hours with resin printer can cover up the machine cost itself, while FDM users are still struggling to sell their 1hr print time benchy for $2.

[tangodown]

Resin is kinda only useful for toys imo. If your doing functional print FDM for sure and there's already SLS for anything above that. I really don't understand the hype on resin unless you play a lot of D&D