a material which combines the advantages of ABS and PLA is PET-G but requires a heated bed similar to ABS too.

A great ressource for 3D printers reviews is the '3D Printer Guide'.

and be aware that the XYZ printers do use dongled filaments, i.e. no choice in using other/cheaper filaments.

Edited by user Monday, October 1, 2018 8:56:39 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

the included software is the freely available Cura open source slicing software which provides a beginner mode and can be used with allmost every printer (after configuring some specs.).

Thank you Larry – does this include making a support structure?

Have a look at repetier host as well. Easy to use, will open a number of mesh formats obj, stl and so on. Uses cura as a slicer (and others with,additional set up) , easy explained options.
You can visualise the finished sliced model, helps you see and understand overhangs etc.

I have a Raspberry pi controlling my printer which is Octopi, which has built in slicers etc. But I just use it as a controller now and Repetier host as my slicer software.

Thanks – when I used to have models printed in college several years ago, I remember the guy in charge of the shop would soak the model in some sort of liquid to separate the support (or something).. Is this still applicable today?

My employer and I are on this learning curve right now, too. We've bought a Creality CR-10 S5, Creality make generic printers and other more specialised, this one's part of a CR-10 series that uses much of the technology developed by the Reprap community on a 2020 aluminium section frame, trolleys supporting the table and extruder. It's got a 500mm x 500mm x 500mm envelope, but the bed heater's only 300mm x 300mm, so elevating the temperature for ABS can take three hours. We usually use PLA because the bed heating's faster and it doesn't give trouble. My boss is more tolerant of tolerances than me, so he tells me to leave out supports, and maybe he's right, since our overhangs so far have been only 20mm or so and there's not been sag with 60 degrees of overhang. The machine came with Cura, but we downloaded Ultimaker's development of Cura and have been using that. I don't know if it's significantly different to others' evolution, but it does the job well. I used to send stuff for SLA prototyping in years gone by, and the bureau we used was very fussy about .stl errors, they tested and corrected what errors they found with MiniMagics and charged us a lot to do that, when Netfabb came up we started using that, very satisfactorily and saved what they'd been hitting us for with MiniMagics. Since we got this printer, it seems to me that Cura is very tolerant of .stl files, probably because it also handles and slices VRML and obj models too. I've never had it spit the dummy and refuse to cooperate, it doesn't even complain about anything. In my experience, it's getting easier and more reliable.
FWIW, it's got a glass bed and we spray it with hairspray, there's a bit of warp lift because we've been doing 400mm lengths with 20x30mm sections, but PLA's better for that than ABS. Others say on the net that Ikea's mirror glass is great for sticking stuff down, so I expect that that's an avenue we'll be going down sooner or later.
The supports generated by Cura are single-extrusion-thickness blades or a cellular lattice of blades of the same material, it has to be separated mechanically, so soaking's not part of the procedure. Soluble supports can give 100% surface support, fused filament extrusion can't. It can be a bit of a grind to make surfaces smoother after support's removed.

Edited by user Monday, October 1, 2018 11:14:33 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified