The holiday season is upon us. We’re bracing ourselves for the inevitable auditory attack of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas followed by Wham’s Last Christmas (we like to participate in Whamageddon every year). While many of us are avoiding the mall craze to spend Christmas in peace, there is always that one lingering problem: figuring out gifts for friends and relatives. If you are shopping for a 3D printing enthusiast – or treating yourself – look no further.

We’ve curated a guide divided into these main categories:

  • Our Top Picks
  • Awesome Accessories
  • Fantastic Filaments
  • Limitless Learning
  • Printed Presents
  • Trusty Toolkits
  • Ultimate Upgrades

Most of them are affordable additions for your 3D printing hobby – nozzles, toolkits, and more. You still have time to place your order because we’re not stopping until Xmas, and expedited shipping is usually pretty fast. In-stock items can be ordered until December 18th and with expedited shipping, they can still arrive in time. The updated shipping table is here.

Our Top 5 Picks

Let’s kick it off with a selection of our favorite picks – the best of the best.

1. Paint Set + Miniature Painting for Beginners Online course Bundle

I’ll be honest. I have successfully avoided miniature painting for years, despite being a huge D&D fan. It’s one of those hunches: don’t do it, it will consume all your free time. But, as a great man once said: “Life, uh, finds a way.” Recently, my colleagues from the Academy team prepared a wonderful course on how to start with miniature painting and I volunteered to test drive it. Fast forward a couple of days, and I already have a new set of brushes, a new LED light, some tiny drills, acrylic thinner, additional fine-grit sandpaper, and god knows what else in my shopping cart. Thanks, I guess? 🙂

There are thousands of miniatures ready to be downloaded from Printables – you’ll achieve the best results with an SLA 3D printer, but a well-calibrated CORE One or MK4S (with a 0.25mm nozzle) can do wonders!

This bundle combines the Prusa Starter Paint Set with the Prusa Academy online course Miniature Painting for Beginners, saving you about 15 USD off their combined price. The paints and brushes from the paint set are used throughout the six sample projects included in the course.

2. iFixit Mako Driver Kit

Get the ultimate driver kit from iFixit. The Mako set includes all the necessary bits you’ll need for all kinds of repairs or assembly. You can tackle any screw you come across on any pretty much anything – from 3D printers to retro gaming consoles.

3. The Iconic Prusa Heatbed… as a mousepad!

If you miss your 3D printer every time you lose sight of your heatbed, you can now place it right on your workbench and enjoy looking at it every day with our Original Prusa MousePad.

4. Original Prusa Socks- Hex and Infill versions

The older I get, the more I learn to appreciate presents which are squishy and made of wool (we call them “soft presents” here). A pair of socks suddenly warms not only my feet, but my heart as well. And boy, do we have socks for you! Two different pairs, actually – and they come with the same kind of detailed assembly guide like all of our 3D printer kits.

5. Original Prusa Beanie TSL Black

A high-quality knitted beanie with a “Top Solid Layer” patch – keeps your head warm and also gives you an opportunity to explain your hobby to anyone who has no clue about what a “Top Solid Layer” is. 🙂

Plus, we have a wide assortment of hoodies, t-shirts, and more right here!

Bonus Number 6: A 3D Printer Kit

I’m pretty sure you’ve seen it coming from a mile away: the ultimate present is, of course, a 3D printer kit. It’s an investment, but the things you can do with a 3D printer will quickly outweigh the initial costs. Plus, you can absolutely assemble a 3D printer with your kid! It’s about the same level as advanced LEGO Technic kits and same goes for the fun factor. By the time you’re reading this, we likely can’t deliver a MK4S or CORE One+ kit in time for Christmas Eve. But we can definitely ask Santa to stop by with a late delivery some time after Christmas/New Year.

So, those were our top 5 (six, actually) picks for winter holidays. But the selection in our e-shop keeps growing every month and there’s a lot more to choose from. The additional picks are sorted into specific categories. Let’s take a look!

Awesome Accessories

We added a couple of “Starter Packs” to our e-shop, which include the basic accessories for every printer: MK4S, XL, and CORE One/+. They usually contain a spare print sheet, two nozzles (0.4mm and 0.6mm), plus acupuncture needles and a brush for cleaning the nozzle. If someone’s getting their first 3D printer, these are really useful items.

Having more nozzle diameters is always a great idea: by default, our printers use a 0.4mm version, but you can swap it for a 0.25mm if you want to achieve better detail, or go to 0.6mm or even 0.8mm for much faster printing (with more visible layers). The “Standard Nozzle Kit” contains everything you need. Plus, nozzles are a consumable (they wear out with use), so having some spare ones is always good.

Needless to say, nozzles are only one way to expand your 3D printing capabilities. When you want to use more materials, not just PLA, you should also look for additional print sheets. Why? Because various materials adhere to the print surface differently, and a smooth sheet can sometimes be a pretty bad option. Some materials can adhere too strongly to it and when you try to detach the model, you can damage the surface.

In case you’re ready to print more durable objects for your workshop, UV-resistant equipment for your garden, chemically-resistant accessories for your pool’s chlorine dispenser, or robust parts for your RC car, you should always find a correct print sheet for the materials you use. Check prusa3d.com/materials to find the ideal match of filament and print sheet.

There’s more to discover, but let me actually showcase one last thing: the OpenPrintTag. It’s our new initiative to bring order to the Wild West of filament spools and the response from the community as well as filament manufacturers was incredible! Basically, you place the NFC-enabled tag on any spool of your choice and then use Prusa app to write all the information you want onto the tag. This way, you can keep a perfect track of your materials. And, of course, our new Prusament materials come with this fully open read/write NFC tag by default. Soon, it will be even more capable – read all about it here!

Fantastic Filaments

Prusament had a great year! The entire production was moved to our brand-new factory with more space, more filament production lines, and more opportunities to experiment and innovate.

The most recent release is a special 7-year anniversary filament. The idea was simple. When someone asked, “How much glitter can you add to PLA?”, the answer was “Yes.” It’s the most glitterest-est-est PLA we have ever seen. Adding more glitter would probably cause an anomaly in time and space. It’s beautiful.

If a sparkly orange is not your kind of color, we have something entirely different. We recently partnered with Noctua and brought their iconic colors in PLA: meet Noctua Beige and Brown! Needless to say, we’re huge NH-D15 G2 – or “fans” in human language.

What else? In May, we launched our first flexible filament: Prusament TPU 95A – it excels in dimensional accuracy, low moisture absorption, good bridging and overhang performance. And also great mechanical properties even at sub-zero temperatures. Not a weird flex at all!

Personally, I love the Prusament Woodfill – it’s the perfect muted color for home decor. Stocks are getting low, so grab it before it’s too late.

There’s 275 items in the Prusament category, and there’s not enough space here to cover every item, so it’s up to you to take a look and pick one!

Limitless Learning

Our Prusa Academy team brought you SIX new courses this year. They’ve spent an unholy amount of time perfecting them, and it shows. So, when you’re ready to do more than just download a model from Printables and send it to your printer, you’ll find these Academy courses incredibly handy – they cover the entire journey:

 

Printed Presents

With a 3D printer, last-minute gifts are much easier to get (still need to account for print time, though). We’re running a community contest for the best holiday decorations, my colleague Bára prepared an awesome guide on how to 3D print Christmas Cards, and we even have some practical tips for parametric 3D-printed organizers.

Printables.com now features over 1,100,000 models ready to be downloaded, sliced and printed. It’s a huge pile of cool stuff to browse through, so to make things a bit easier, head over to the Contests page where you can find thematically-grouped 3D prints which you can easily sort and filter.

Seriously, there’s so much stuff, it’s really hard to name everything worth your attention and time. The best thing is that most models are actually usable things, not dust collectors. You can find accessories for an adventurer’s backpack, cool can holders, fishing equipment, D&D addons, workshop aids, wall art, sewing tools… Simply remember what your friend’s or relative’s hobby is. You can instantly find something useful and even customizable – adding a text in PrusaSlicer is super easy, barely an inconvenience!

Trusty Toolkits

We could have just thrown in a bunch of low-cost off-brand tools in our e-shop and tick the box on the list, but that’s not the actual case. We always try to find a well-made, reliable tool – something that we want to use as well.

Here are a couple of ideas for tools you can easily throw in the basket when you’re shopping for something bigger, say, a 3D printer.

  • iFixit Mako Driver Kit is the ultimate screwdriver set for disassembling and reassembling pretty much anything – from 3D printers to toys to retro consoles.
  • Kinex Digital Calibers – high-quality digital calipers. Ideal for situations where you need to design a replacement part and need exact dimensions.
  • Olfa SAC-1 Precision Knife – to get rid of brims, leftover supports, or other surface imperfections

And one more thing to keep your nozzle fresh – a set of nozzle cleaning wires by CNC kitchen. While we ship a small needle with our printers, it doesn’t usually last long. This set is much easier to use, too.

Ultimate Upgrades

Now, this part is for those who have been printing for some time. If you’re looking for a gift for someone else, make sure you pick a compatible package. But all of these are really nice ways to take the 3D printing experience to the next level.

Our printers always had upgrade paths – when a newer model came out, everybody could buy a special package to rebuild their printer into a brand new one. We also did the unthinkable and when the CORE One was released, we actually brought the possibility to rebuild the MK4S into the CORE One. It’s a big project, but you’ll really get the full CORE One in the end, no strings attached!

Recently, we published a small convenience upgrade for the CORE One, bringing it to CORE One+.

And, of course, we have the MMU3 – smart, efficient, and fast 5-color printing.

However, not everything needs to be a massive endeavor similar to building a huge LEGO Technics kit.

For the Prusa CORE One/+/L, we have the Advanced Filtration System, a bolt-on upgrade that helps to stop microparticles from spreading.

For hackers and tinkerers, there is the GPIO Hackerboard Set – aimed at advanced users who want to try some input/output programming.

There’s so much more to discover, so don’t forget to check the new section in the store called Gift Ideas.

Happy printing and also happy holidays!