Few thoughts on printers

Hi,

I am new to 3D printing. Just got my first printer (Chinese clone of Replicator 2X). Have been experimenting a lot in the last 10 days. My first impressions are that this technology is amazing, but is real pain to use. The knowledge and tinkering required to print anything useful is enormous. I am making an enclosure for a hobby electronics project, it consists of three parts each 194x74 mm. I had to adjust a lot of the design to be able to print it. Level of the bed, keeping the temperatures right, preventing warps - it is a truly full time job. Anyway, not complaining, just my first impressions. I can also say that i am happy as this 3D printer saved me lots of time compare to machining each part on the CNC(making a working CAM program is orders of magnitude more painful). The other option is making a injection mold, but out of my price range for this project.

Even after multiple failures and repairs, i have almost finished all little details and have good to go STL files for (small time)mass production. It is obvious this printer will not
make 50, 100 or 1000 pcs of my enclosure, so my question is - can somebody recommend a better model that i can use for production, still in the hobby price range, but with better build quality:

- thicker, well built to precision heated platform
- don't really need two extruders, leveling with two is much more difficult
- ABS material
- better method of leveling - probably screws with micro-threads
- aluminum body of the printer
- no belts at all

Thank you.

If we disregard the belt thing, i guess you are used to real cnc-machines and thats what you hope to find. Not gonna happen in this pricerange. Your best bet imo is Zortrax M200.

Thanks for the suggestion. I did some google image search, this one:

http://zortrax.com/geiger-counter-enclosure-prototype

is similar to what i am making. It looks impressive, the question how much effort to make one piece and could the result be re-created for say 20-30 pieces or more. They have used 0.14 mm precision for this piece, on my enclosure such resolution will need probably 11 hours to print, being three piece set, means for one set i need 3 days. With average consumption of 200W on the Wanhao that is lots of electricity. I would assume the Zortrax is similar in all measures, probably more reliable (yes, excluding the belt thing).

About power consumtion off 200W, it is pretty much the same for all printers. I mostly use 0.19mm layers when i print something on my Zortrax. Regarding re-creation for many pieces it is very good, i see no problem with that part. Warping can still be a problem for bigger parts, but that is same for all printers when doing ABS.