Preface: I’m on my third cheap printer in the past ten years. I bought an Anycubic kobra neo a few years ago. I told myself I wouldn’t mess with doing anything to it, but I was running into issues because of low quality control. I put it away due to frustration for the past year and now needed to print something and just figuring out all the issues. Right now I’m looking into upgrading the part cooling fan as I cannot get rid of stringing even on low temps with PLA. I should just buy a good printer but I just don’t feel like I can justify it.
There’s always a modification then: the nozzle wears out, you have to replace it at one point.
if replacing the nozzle with an idnentical one, that is a repair not a modification.
That’s still “how it came out of the box” though as long as you use the same nozzle or one reccomended by the company. Just like replacing your brake pads with factory brake pads and not upgrading them to something better.
Okay, but changing the nozzle still is a normal modification that is required to do if you want to print abrasive filaments for example or thinner or bigger nozzle diameters. It’s very easy to change the nozzle because of that, manufacturers expect you to change it.
How about add-ons, not modifications? Do you count that as modifying if you add a raspberry pi or a camera, but you can still just remove them and have the printer just like it came ootb?
These are definitely things that come with better printers these days. I only use octoprint with my cheap printer. It gives better results because a rpi is miles better at keeping up than the cheap board they put in there, it also didn’t come with Wi-Fi or a camera which are things that come out of the box on other printers. Of course in the past printers didn’t come with those things. I would consider them accessories because they added the USB port to the printer for you to send commands to, which is what you’re doing.However, If the printer were “better” then you wouldn’t have to use those things since it would already have Wi-Fi, better board, and a camera built in.