In early February I bought my first 3d printer. I was looking for a decent beginner’s entry level printer that wouldn’t cost too much. I heard about Aldi’s Coocoon Create sold last year for around $499. It was essentially a re-branded Wanhao i3 duplicator v2.1 with some sample PLA filament included. Being nearly a year since Aldi had that sale I thought I might be holding my breath waiting for their next sale to appear again.

Luckily I stumbled across the Balco brand which is also another Wanhao clone like the Coocon Create is. Kogan had it on sale for $499 and it’s recently acquired DickSmith online store was selling the same Balco model for $399. I ordered it online through DickSmith and it was delivered within a few days. Quality is excellent and my first PLA prints have turned out great.

Assembly was a little fiddly but not rocket science. I think I attached 4 screws or so. When it prints it makes the coolest pew-pew kinda sound and it’s not too noisy. I printed the cog 3d gcode model file which was pre-loaded onto the included 4GB sd card. I watched the Balco bed levelling video on their Youtube channel before I started to print.