Hi experts. Your comments please: I'm in the market for a consumer-level printer that can print threads (eg large nuts and bolts) and also print small "cages". I have a couple pre-purchase questions, especially on the question of support material, or rather, the lack there of on most consumer printers...

The attached picture shows, in gold, the 3 components of a special bulkhead I've designed for tapping into a 3" PVC pipe -- part of a hydroponics project. (For scale, the threads you see are 1" in diameter.) This part printed very nicely on a big 3D printer at a local college. I noticed during production that there was a lot of support material (the kind you can rinse away) in the filter area at the far left. (The main part was printed filter-side down.) So can a consumer level printer (most of which don't seem to have a dedicated support mtl nozzle) print this sort of thing. Or, would the machine print using the building material as scaffolding, in the hard-to-reach inside of the filter.

And, in general, how does the absence of a dedicated support material nozzle limit the types of parts that a printer can print.

Note: I'm especially interested in the Prusa i3 MK2, since by all accounts its a great value. It doesn't have a support material nozzle.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Kurt in San Jose, CA