So my local grocery store has been clearing out some odd stuff lately, and today there was a pallet of Elegoo printers right by the checkout. An actual FDM machine, boxed up, sitting between the cereal aisle and the lottery tickets. I stood there for a good five minutes convincing myself I didn't need it. I lost that arguement with myself obviously. Got the last one on the pallet too, wich felt like a sign. The cashier had no idea what it was and just scanned it like a bag of potatoes, which made the whole thing even funnier. Got it home and unboxed it after dinner. Build quality seems decent out of the box, everything packed tight and nothing rattling around. Haven't run a print yet, still leveling the bed and reading through the manual, but first impressions are good. My wife came downstairs, saw the box, and just sighed. She knew exactly what happened without me saying a word. Milk and bread did make it into the cart at least. Barely.
Went in for milk and bread, walked out with a 3D printer
Oct 12, 2026
Last reply: 1 day ago
3 Replies
Funny how these things show up where you least expect them. Mine came from a clearance shelf at a farm supply store of all places, marked down because the box had a corner crushed in. Nothing inside was damaged and it's been running fine for over a year now.
Since you're still in setup mode, here's what made the biggest difference for me early on. Do a few test prints before you get ambitious. The little pre-sliced dog that comes on the included card is actualy useful, it'll tell you if the bed height is right. If the first layer looks like squashed noodles, drop the nozzle a hair. If it comes out like dry spaghetti, you're too far off. I wasted a whole weekend on failed benchys because I was stubborn about the paper method and didn't trust my eyes.
Also grab a glue stick from wherever you bought your milk. A thin smear on the bed helps prints stick and saves you a lot of frustration on bigger parts. My wife has gone from sighing at the printer to actually requesting things from it, mostly hooks and organizers. That's the real victory in my house.
Post a photo of your first successful print when it happens. The first clean one is a good feeling.
Mine never came from a store, my brother-in-law sold me his used one for cheap when he decided 3D printing wasn't his hobby after all. Best money I've spent in a while, but I'll say this: the learning curve is real, and it's mostly about filament, not the printer. My first month was full of failed prints untill I figured out that the spool of PLA I left sitting in the garage over a humid summer was basially toast. Prints came out stringy and weak and I almost blamed the machine. Once I started keeping filament in a sealed bin with some desiccant packs, my failure rate dropped to almost nothing.
Also, don't skip the small calibration prints even if they're boring. A twenty minute benchy taught me more about my machine than a week of watching videos. And tell your wife the sighing phase is temporary. Mine now sends me requests for random stuff, replacement knobs, a phone stand shaped like a cat, hooks for the garden tools. Somewhere around month three she went from skeptical to putting in orders.
Ha, printers at the grocery store. Back in my day you ordered a bag of parts and spent a weekend squinting at wiring diagrams before you printed a single thing. Half the fun was building the machine itself, though my family disagreed loudly by Sunday night.
One tip from the old days that still holds up: keep a notebook next to the printer. Write down what settings you changed and what happened. When a print fails three weeks later you will not remember what you tweaked. I have filled two notebooks this way and they have saved me more times than I can count. Enjoy the machine, and good on you for remembering the milk.
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