Technologies
Best 3D Printer Deals: 9 Fantastic Printers at the Best Prices
There are heavy discounts on 3D printers, if you know where to look.
3D printing is more popular than ever, which means it’s never been easier to dive in and try out this technology for yourself. You may think you’ll have to drop $1,000 or more on a printer and materials to get started, but there’s a big market out there with plenty of entry level models that you can pick up for around $200 or less. And there are tons of deals you can take advantage of right now to start your setup for less.
If you’re a first-time buyer or looking to buy a 3D printer as a gift for a beginner, getting a good deal is even more important. All the best 3D printers have advanced features that make your life easier, so if you can snag one for less than the normal price, that’s a big plus.
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If you have a creative person in your life, then they should really own a 3D printer. The joy that comes with seeing your creations brought to life in the 3D can’t be overstated. Currently on sale for a little under $200, the Elegoo Neptune 2 is a great starting point for a hobby that produces excellent results with little effort.
This is perfect for a high schooler interested in engineering or an adult looking to start 3D printing for the first time.
We recently reviewed this new entry-level printer, which offers fancy features like a self-leveling bed at a reasonable price. This printer is normally priced at around $200, but some sales do drop it lower than that. It’s a simple kit, that is easy to assemble and works surprisingly well for such a budget price.
The Mono X is the perfect mid-size resin printer for making those larger pieces of jewelry or an entire army of miniatures. The build plate is almost twice as big as the standard resin printer, and it gives you a lot more scope on what projects you can do. This deal is nearly half price, so it’s well worth picking one up today.
I’ve recently been working with the Finder 3 and I’m impressed with the quality it was able to produce straight from the box. It’s easy to set up and comes with a flexible build plate that you can replace the glass bed with. It makes it far easier to remove builds.
This is the perfect printer for a teacher, as the enclosure makes it stable, and the slicer can control multiple printers at once via Wi-Fi.
This is easily my favorite small resin 3D printer. It’s super-fast and prints beautiful models every time. Elegoo are old hats at resin printing, so every part you’ll ever need to replace is easily acquired at a reasonable price. The details that can be captured with the Mars 3 are stunning, and some of my favorite models have come from this little machine.
Any time you can get the Mars 3 on a discount is a good day, so snag one now.
The Kobra Plus is in that sweet spot between a printer that is overly large, and one that is too small to be useful. You can make full-size helmets and big cosplay items without needing an entire workbench dedicated to it. With $120 off the price, it’s a bargain.
The Elegoo Saturn 2 is my favorite resin printer right now. It prints incredibly detailed models at a speed that is often astonishing. The bed size is much larger than the printers in the smaller category, while its footprint is much easier to deal with than other, larger printers. You can print finely detailed cosplay pieces or multiple tabletop miniatures with equal ease with the Saturn 2, making it perfect for a small business. Plus, this deal comes with a free $25 Newegg gift card.
Read more: Elegoo Saturn 2 review
The CR-30 is one of the first commercially available conveyor belt 3D printers, and it is fascinating to use. It isn’t for the beginner hobbyist as it takes a little bit of tweaking to get right, but once you do you can print long models like swords or lots of small models on a production line.
If you make the same model over and again for your Etsy store, this is a great printer to try.
The Photon 4K is being replaced with the new M3 series, but it could still be worth your time. With a 4K monochrome screen, the printer is very fast without sacrificing any detail. In fact, the details on this machine are superb, especially on small models like miniatures.
At $189, the Photon 4K offers an amazing entry into resin 3D printing, even if Anycubic is selling off the stock.
Materials and accessories
It’s not just the 3D printers themselves that are on sale. It’s often the accessories and materials too. While the savings aren’t as drastic — $5 to $10 savings, maybe — these add up over time when you have to buy a lot of materials for your projects.
Quantum PLA takes the standard filament we all know and adds a new twist. The dual tones create a shimmering effect on your printed model and make it change color as you turn it. It’s gorgeous and you should get as many different colors as you can.
More on 3D printing
Technologies
Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for May 24, #713
Hints and answers for Connections for May 24, #713.
Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Today’s Connections puzzle has a fun variety of categories. The purple one appeals to my English major heart. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.
The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time
Hints for today’s Connections groups
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Goo-goo.
Green group hint: Not shirts.
Blue group hint: City that never sleeps.
Purple group hint: Acclaimed writers.
Answers for today’s Connections groups
Yellow group: Baby gear.
Green group: Kinds of pants minus «s.»
Blue group: New York sports team members.
Purple group: Black women authors.
Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words
What are today’s Connections answers?
The yellow words in today’s Connections
The theme is baby gear. The four answers are bib, bottle, monitor and stroller.
The green words in today’s Connections
The theme is kinds of pants minus «s.» The four answers are capri, jean, jogger and slack.
The blue words in today’s Connections
The theme is New York sports team members. The four answers are Jet, Met, Net and Ranger.
The purple words in today’s Connections
The theme is black women authors. The four answers are Butler, Gay, Hooks and Walker.
Technologies
Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, May 20
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 20.
Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
Today’s NYT Mini Crossword is a fun one, and now I’m singing the song from 1-Across in my head. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.
The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.
Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword
Let’s get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers.
Mini across clues and answers
1A clue: «Pink ___ Club» (Chappell Roan hit)
Answer: PONY
5A clue: Instrument that might be made with a comb and wax paper
Answer: KAZOO
6A clue: How bedtime stories are often read
Answer: ALOUD
7A clue: On edge
Answer: TENSE
8A clue: Short Instagram video
Answer: REEL
Mini down clues and answers
1D clue: Less colorful
Answer: PALER
2D clue: Layer of the upper atmosphere
Answer: OZONE
3D clue: Totally pointless
Answer: NOUSE
4D clue: Hit a high note in a high place, perhaps
Answer: YODEL
5D clue: Kit ___ bar
Answer: KAT
How to play more Mini Crosswords
The New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day’s Mini Crossword for free, but you’ll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.
Technologies
Want to Speak to Dolphins? Researchers Won $100,000 AI Prize Studying Their Whistling
The scientists studied a bottlenose dolphin community in Sarasota, Florida, uncovering evidence of language-like communications.
If any dolphins are reading this: hello!
A team of scientists studying a community of Florida dolphins has been awarded the first $100,000 Coller Dolittle Challenge prize, set up to award research in interspecies communication algorithms.
The US-based team, led by Laela Sayigh of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found that a type of whistle that dolphins employ is used as an alarm. Another whistle they studied is used by dolphins to respond to unexpected or unfamiliar situations. The team used non-invasive hydrophones to perform the research, which provides evidence that dolphins may be using whistles like words, shared with multiple members of their communities.
Capturing the sounds is just the beginning. Researchers will use AI to continue deciphering the whistles to try to find more patterns.
«The main thing stopping us cracking the code of animal communication is a lack of data. Think of the 1 trillion words needed to train a large language model like ChatGPT. We don’t have anything like this for other animals,» said Jonathan Birch, a professor at the London School of Economics and Politics and one of the judges for the prize.
«That’s why we need programs like the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which has built up an extraordinary library of dolphin whistles over 40 years. The cumulative result of all that work is that Laela Sayigh and her team can now use deep learning to analyse the whistles and perhaps, one day, crack the code,» he said.
The award was part of a ceremony honoring the work of four teams from across the world. In addition to the dolphin project, researchers studied ways in which nightingales, marmoset monkeys and cuttlefish communicate.
The challenge is a collaboration between the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University. Submissions for next year open up in August.
Dolphins are just the beginning
Researching animals and trying to learn the secrets of their communication is nothing new; but AI is speeding up the creation of larger and lager datasets.
«Breakthroughs are inevitable,» says Kate Zacarian, CEO and co-founder of Earth Species Project, a California-based nonprofit that also works in breaking down language barriers with the animal world.
«Just as AI has revolutionized the fields of medicine and material science, we see a similar opportunity to bring those advances to the study of animal communication and empower researchers in this space with entirely new capabilities,» Zacarian said.
Zacarian applauded Sayigh’s team and their win and said it will help bring broader recognition to the study of non-human animal communication. It could also bring more attention to ways that AI can change the nature of this type of research.
«The AI systems aren’t just faster — they allow for entirely new types of inquiry,» she said. «We’re moving from decoding isolated signals to exploring communication as a rich, dynamic, and structure phenomenon — whish is a task that’s simply too big for our human brains, but possible for large-scale AI models.»
Earth Species recently released an open-source large audio language model for analyzing animal sounds called NatureLM-audio. The organization is currently working with biologists and ethologists to study species including carrion crows, orcas, jumping spiders and others and plans to release some of their findings later this year, Zacarian said.
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