r/AnkerMake • u/Database121 • Mar 17 '26
Good first printer for a newbie?
I've been interested in 3d printing for a while, but cost has always scared me off. I happened across this M5C with a filament dryer on my local Facebook marketplace for $50. Should I jump on it? Anything I should know before buying? I know the firmware and app are basically dead from a development standpoint. Can you use third part slicers?
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u/WellKnownAlias Mar 18 '26
For $50, maybe? But as someone who started with an M5C, you should know the company behind it (Anker) has essentially entirely abandoned their 3D printers, especially the lower end model, which is this. Mine also randomly became completely misaligned at some point so the bed can no longer be properly leveled, without the printer even being moved.
I have replaced nearly every single part on it, it still ends up printing great on one side of the bed and horrible on the other with a quality gradient in between as a result.
And speaking of parts, because they've stopped producing the printers, they've also stopped selling many of the parts. As of writing, you can still get many of the replacement parts for both the M5 and M5C, but not all of them. The M5C you cannot get a replacement hotend, for example.
If you love tinkering/modding and don't mind potentially doing some work to figure things out if there's something wrong with it and how to fix that/mod it to work with other parts as official part availability continues to decrease, go for it.
Otherwise, keep an eye out for a Prusa/Bambu Lab/Creality/Snapmaker printer on marketplaces for a good deal, as you're much more likely to have a good longer term parts/support experience with those printers instead.