Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

and

> durable, temperature/chemical resistant materials such as PC/Nylon/ABS or infused materials.

are a little cart-before-horse. This is like asking what ink-and-paper printer to buy for making complex, multi-format printed books to specific criteria, while admitting that you've not used any form of publishing software or understand any of the non-software processes involved in making a book.

The slicer is by far your most important tool for _effective_ 3D printing with a variety of materials, moreso than CAD or 3D modeling. Get a cheaper, more plug-and-play printer that doesn't meet all of your criteria, and focus on learning how to effectively use its slicer.

Print basic things, experiment, and force and make hands-on mistakes with it on relatively forgiving PLA/PETG. Do these _before_ jumping up to a pricier, fully enclosed machine _and also_ before printing harder-to-use materials, each of which will add new difficulties. You don't want your first hotend blob to happen on a decent machine that you actually like while using a material that's difficult or dangerous to deal with.

A Sovol SV06 or SV08 meets most of your criteria at about 1/3 to 1/2 of your budget; I haven't had the best experiences with their reliability but they fit many of your criteria. Used Creality Enders might be even cheaper depending on where you are, and while also fussy are hackable and repairable to the point of often being used as platforms for entirely different printers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmMW6_7lrlQ

To make a CNC machining metaphor - Slicer software is basically just your interface to the dials and knobs on the CNC settings for speeds and feeds. There's more settings, because 3d printing is more like if a CNC had a baby with a welder and an injection molding press, only it's injecting and simultaneously welding up a blob of plastic. You're balancing the toolpaths, the temps, the adhesion, and the overall speed all at the same time, all for whatever material you're using.

So it's complex, but these companies have a ton of data and experience in order to make sure their preset settings are damn good out of the box. And these days, they get it right more often than they get it wrong!

Long story short - you should probably just get a Bambu. You'll learn what you need to learn from it, while having good quality output the whole time. If you find out it's not suitable for what you're looking to do, then you can sell it used with decent resale and get the best printer for your specific application.

Prusa Core One would be a bit more complete OOTB. It is 220mm in the smallest axis (Y) though. Slicer and firmware are open source, but the hardware is not (unlike previous Prusa printers).

Bambu gives you the same capability for much less, but the firmware is not open source (third party open source firmware does exist). I believe the stock firmware also has to "phone home" at least once before it can be used offline.

Even cheaper are less-well known Chinese companies, like Qidi. Firmware is usually a proprietary fork of Klipper or other open source projects; some people have had success flashing the mainline version.

Is your goal to earn or learn?

How much time do you have to spend on 3d printing?