It depends upon how patient you are. Its hard to go wrong with Aleph, as they have great support, and the Lulzbots are great printers. That said, they are much better printers if you invest time in the actual process, which requires an understanding of how the various slicers work, and how to tweak for materials.
There are so many factors that go into getting successful prints: bed temperature, extruder temperature, feed rates, variable layer thicknesses, and so on, and this stuff takes time and experience to successfully navigate. Eventually, it will all make sense, but it can be a wild ride getting there, not to mention expensive, at least in terms of materials.
Adding to the complexity is the fact that you are creating physical objects from digital data using a manufacturing process. There are forms that are going to cause you trouble, and if you understand how to break down these forms and simplify for the process, you can mitigate those issues and get a good print. Guys like James Bruton of X Robots offer great Youtube videos that really help. Understanding that you rarely will print something complex as a single part is a great start. In fact, if you look at the whole process as printing a series of parts for later assembly, you will already be on the road to success in many cases (though not all.)
Materials choice is another topic altogether, and that is often driven by what you are intending to use your parts for. I am not a fan of PLA, for example, but it does have its uses. ABS is very sturdy as a material, and great for constructing mechanical things, but is very fussy and requires very well balanced temperatures at build time, lest the part warps and lifts at the base. Other materials have their own issues, and in some cases, require special print heads (like Ninjaflex, though some may argue that point).
Then there are the mechanics and design of the actual printer. Lulzbots are great, but in order to keep costs reasonable, precision can become an issue. We are dealing with very tight tolerances, so a very minor error in the range of a tenth of a millimeter can present problems when propagated throughout a complete part. Harmonics of the motors can cause minute ripples which may be objectionable to some, and you can see many topics here that address these and other issues. If you’re mechanically inclined, then you may have the skills already to help you deal with them.
I started with an industrial resin printer, and was not happy with the quality I was getting. I added a Makerbot Replicator 2, and after a few hundred dollars of upgrades, got it to be very reliable – however, that was only for PLA, which doesn’t work as well afterwards, as it easily melts when drilled or filed. I got the Taz5 due to what I saw Bruton doing, as he addresses many of the issues you may encounter, and offers some solutions. I knew what I was getting into by this point, and I, for one, and very happy with my results so far.
My next step is to build an enclosure to help maintain the temperature in the build envelope, and get good ABS prints with no warping (hopefully.)
Hope this helps!
