5th Gen - Review and Head to Head with Rep 2

[American 3D Printing]

So the big question pa9k
Would you buy another makerbot 5th gen - knowing what you do now and knowing how many other printers there are in the same price bracket ?

I did not know there were many other printers in the Z18's $6,500 price bracket? I think the Stratasys Mojo is the only other one that comes to mind right off the bat at around $6k. The Fusion 3D is another (relatively) large format FDM machine that sells for around $4k, and Titan Robotics is working on a range of large format FDM machines ranging from $6-10k.

[curious aardvark]

most are probably cheaper.
Wanhao have got some large volume machines out as have the dutch Builder firm.
And don't forget there are some pretty big delta machines around that would give the same build volume.

Wanhao duplicator 5=305mm L x 205mm W x 605mm H for about half the cost of the z18
Big Builder=220 x 210 x 664 mm -= a bit smaller - but it does have a clever one nozzle dual extruder going for it.
Both the above build a good bit taller tha the z18 if not quite as wide.

What I'm basically saying is the makerbots are massively over priced for what you get - so would you genuinely buy another one ?

[pa9k]

So the big question pa9k
Would you buy another makerbot 5th gen - knowing what you do now and knowing how many other printers there are in the same price bracket ?

Well it was totally out of my control. I have been tasked with making this thing work. The biggest reason we got a z18 was because of the large build volume. We are in the aftermarket performance auto parts industry and we build some pretty large things. Another reason was their customer support. They are available whenever we need them and usually offer a quick remedy to whatever issue we are having.

I think we were all taken by surprise with all the issues we were having out of the gate. But we also came from using a u-print abs printer where it was very much just press a button and let it go. Printing on the makerbot requires some thought and fine tuning.

Now, that we have learned alot about the machine and new firmwares and softwares and new extruders have found their way here, I would not be opposed to us buying another z18 at some point.

[curious aardvark]

Cool - worth knowing :-)

[American 3D Printing]

I think we were all taken by surprise with all the issues we were having out of the gate. But we also came from using a u-print abs printer where it was very much just press a button and let it go. Printing on the makerbot requires some thought and fine tuning.

Our Stratasys reseller keeps wanting us to upgrade to a Mojo or U-Print, and I keep asking for a demo (test drive) and they just say "trust us, they're so much better". Well, in my experience every manufacturer claims they're the best, blah blah blah. Our 3D Systems guy insists that the 3rd gen cube is so wonderful. Zortrax keeps bugging us to become Zortrax resellers.

So describe the U-Print and why it is worth so much more than all these desktop machines? I've been told the material is quite expensive. How much does it actually cost?

[pa9k]

Our Stratasys reseller keeps wanting us to upgrade to a Mojo or U-Print, and I keep asking for a demo (test drive) and they just say "trust us, they're so much better". Well, in my experience every manufacturer claims they're the best, blah blah blah. Our 3D Systems guy insists that the 3rd gen cube is so wonderful. Zortrax keeps bugging us to become Zortrax resellers.

So describe the U-Print and why it is worth so much more than all these desktop machines? I've been told the material is quite expensive. How much does it actually cost?

We have an older u-print by dimension, not sure the model. It has really good print quality, and is very consistent and reliable. Our model is also a dual extruder with dissolvable support material in the second extruder. With the u-print its basically just drop the stl into the software and press print and you can walk away knowing that you will come back to a successfully finished print.

The material is extremely expensive (dont know the number off the top of my head but somewhere around 10x the cost of makerbot pla). That's the whole reason we started looking for a new printer. And they (idk if they still have this) have some sensors on the filament spools that prevent you from using third party filaments. We've had some errors with our spool holders saying the spool is empty and stopping the print when there's still over half a spool of filament left. That's a lot of money to throw out.

So my thoughts are if your looking for a printer that's really easy for everyone to use and aren't exactly worried about the cost of the material, the u print is a good choice.

As i said though our printer is many years old and maybe they have changed or improved on a lot of these things since then.

[johnschneider89]

I'm not sure if it was mentioned in here before, but Simplify3D has made all of the difference in our print quality. Don't get me wrong, MakerBot Desktop is OK, but we had some major print quality issues on large flat surfaces. And support material? Giant pain to remove. Since switching to Simplify3D we've had much better quality prints and support material pretty much falls off once the print it done. Our Z18 and 5th Gen have gone from our least used printers to our MOST used printers.

Here's a picture showing the difference in print quality.

2015-04-15 08.48.24.jpg

[curious aardvark]

yeah s3d really does work.
The infill currently is crap but I tend to substitute a lot of shells if I want something really strong - or go back to makerware desktop, but that's now a last resort.

[American 3D Printing]

Quick update - we finally sold that 5th gen, it went for $1,400. Amazingly, less than 2 weeks after selling it, we get ANOTHER customer who wants us to sell his 5th Gen (and digitizer) on consignment.