I had a Anycubic brand DLP resin printer for a while and it printed fast and had nice resolution but the resin smell gave me bad headaches, plus having to clean the parts with an alcohol wash system followed by having to UV cure them, just got old.
I recently spent the money and got a Prusa mk3s+ and have to say it is ridiculously easy to use, ive never had a bad print…. Even my kids and wife can use it. Its 2-3x the cost of an Ender so it feels overpriced for what it is, but it might be worth the cost given the ease of use and reliability. FDM just isnt going to have as nice of resolution as resin, but the ease of use is awesome.
My favorite plastic material/process that i purchase from protolabs for work projects is HP’s Multi-Jet Fusion, using nylon. Formlabs makes a more affordable SLS system but I think its still in the $10k range so its out of the reach of most of us hobbyists.
I had bought and ran a metal printer at my prior employer and they were a lot of work, very cool but there is a long way to go before they will be replacing subtractive machining for standard products (obviously there are some things printers can make that machining never could, and vice versa). Most metal prints need to be cut from a build plate, supports need to be removed (probably the biggest pain), parts typically need 2 heat treat processes, and then you need to machine any critical features and abrasive blast and/or polish if you want a nice finish. Here is a pizza cutter handle i made for some friends when I was first learning to run it, (6000 layers of 17-4 stainless)
