without hijacking... again (i'm super sorry lol)...
Anet A8
Mine started as something close to this (although the "cheap kits" were still 200-300 range, they've come down a bit). The Anet A8 has become like THE most popular printer for people that don't mind getting a giant box of parts to put together (no soldering-just lots of parts to put together, think big erector set
). It also, i think, has the biggest community of purchasers and modifications. The site i linked, way back in the thread now, with my desktop hydro isn't
my site, Thingiverse is one of the many sites out there that provide an indexing/searching/hosting mechanism for the 3d modeling/printing community. So basically that is like a product page for my "thing", as they call it, that i designed. My printer started similar to this. Within 2 weeks i had already started redesigning (with no prior cad experience either-mind you) some pieces to the printer itself. The sky is really the limit-my printed parts (on the printer) are now 100% designed and printed by me and there is very little of the original left other than a few of the electronics.
I would also always recommend scouring interwebs for tutorials on things like CAD or OPENSCAD. Specifically-i use a completely free website called OnShape.com which is a really cool online CAD software-but super easy to use.
Anyway, always willing to help out how i can
EDIT: So the reason i bring up Thingiverse.com is that it is one of the places you can search for models that others have already created AND online apps that let you customize models. Why reinvent the wheel when you can reuse someones open source design or adapt it to your needs