Best larger printer in 2k-4k range?

Hey all,

I'm thinking about picking up a 3D printer. They've always interested me, and I think I could use one to build some prototype car parts (brackets, gauge clusters, etc) for my at-home project. A neighbor is also interested in working with me to build printed hands for her son.

In any case, I've been reading a lot of these forums and there are a LOT of potential products.

• I'm looking for something that can build up to or over 12" flat. If it printed a bit smaller, but was a really awesome printer I'd consider it still and find a way to make the gauge cluster two pieces that snap together.
• It doesn't have to be able to print in more than one color, but two would be a nice-to-have.
• I'm not afraid to build it or have it be more "community" supported vs. an out-of-the-box setup, however I definitely don't wanting something that needs tinkering, fixing, or resetting after every few prints.
• My budget is anywhere from 2-4k for the right setup.

Right now I mainly use Sketch-up pro to do my modeling. Will that transfer well to the Printer programs out there, or can those models be imported?

Cheers all, and thanks for the help in advance. In the meantime I'll continue to read through this forum.

I've heard mixed reviews about moving models from sketch-up to 3D printing, but in theory any printer can make an attempt at any .stl file, and there are online conversion utilities.

I recommend finding a makerspace and getting some hands-on experience 3D printing before you drop a few thousand dollars on a printer.

I've been looking and there appears to be one place in the Portland area that has one. I'm hoping to find a neighbor or someone in-town that has one I can check out and pick their brain about.

All that said, I'm still interesting in seeing what people like re: larger printers in that price range.

Cheers!

Our Fusion3 F306 is just under $4K with the single extruder. Plenty fast, customers tell us great print quality, 12"x12"x12" print volume and very durable (we have printers with over 8500 hours without any meaningful failures).
Please feel free to visit our site http://www.fusion3design.com to learn more

(disclaimer: we're a little biased, that's our company)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fusion3 3D Printers

Our Fusion3 F306 is just under $4K with the single extruder. Plenty fast, customers tell us great print quality, 12"x12"x12" print volume and very durable (we have printers with over 8500 hours without any meaningful failures).
Please feel free to visit our site http://www.fusion3design.com to learn more

(disclaimer: we're a little biased, that's our company)

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Hi, if you don't mind a feedback from a user working with 3d printers. The price seems to be way off, I can understand that you took time working on the warping. Still it's really hard to justify a price over 3k. I'd like to consider an option such as acrylic pannel enclosure to prevent warping as much as possible. Because even if your base print does not warp, the structure itself will because of the cold air surrounding.

Yes, there are quite a few choices out there. We have three printers. Started with a DDD Cubex Duo, ran it for about 18 months. Went looking for a replacement. Like you, we wanted a 12x12xSomething build envelope. Our use case is primarily making PLA parts that we use on our manufacturing machinery. We design in Solidworks, there are two engineers in our little department. Time is money. We narrowed it down to the Lulzbot TAZ 4 and Fusion3 F306.

We bought the Lulzbot ($2,000) in January because we were put off by the F306's price ($4,000). We struggled getting the TAZ 4 dialed in to our applications. Bought the F306 as well. Eventually got the TAZ 4 dialed in while waiting for the F306 to ship. The TAZ 4 is in full production. When the F306 arrived (mid March), the first part out was usable. There have been no print failures that weren't due to errors on our part (forget to refresh the glue on the bed, empty the filament spool mid-print, etc.).

If we run the two printers side by side with similar slicer settings, the F306 is a little faster than the TAZ 4, yields a somewhat higher quality print especially when it comes to overhangs, and there are some parts we can print on the F306 that the TAZ 4 can't (due to the F306's better overhang and supports performance). Both printers work within their limitations. We know what the TAZ can or can't do now. We're still exploring the limits of the F306.


Overall, both are good machines for the money. From our experience, the one you choose will depend on your quality requirements and where you are in the trade-off between tinkering with something that costs less or paying more for something that works better out of the box.

Looking at the price difference, I can say that (in our case) the difference was more than made up for by the amount of time I spent tinkering on the TAZ 4 until it began producing usable parts for us. YMMV, of course.

P.S. The Cubex was educational but DDD's support for it was horrible. In the beginning, I struggled to get parts. No one answered the phone, returned calls, e-mails, etc. I only got support after I contacted the investor relations department (I do own stock in DDD, don't ask me why). But it never got much better. We ordered parts October 2014 that didn't arrive until late December. Not rocket science stuff, either. Hot end nozzles, replacement filament tube, things like that. The only way I would let a DDD printer into our plant now would be if they put it in here for free on at least six month's trial.

Look on 3D Hubs for machine owners close to you and talk to them.

I think the best way to go is build a smaller RepRap style printer for around $300 that uses Nema 17 steppers, then use that to print the needed parts to build the larger RepRap that would meet your needs. You would be able to reuse the steppers and controller board from the smaller version that you use to strap the larger version, and many parts are lower cost to print than buy for the larger one.

If you use a non heated wood print bed, and 8mm rails, then getting the longer rails and bigger print bed is not a problem.

Your total should be about $300 max for the first smaller printer, plus about $20 for rails, wire, and wood to expand it, plus about 0.2 KG of filament for the printed parts at $21 per KG that would be $4.20 in filament, so the total would be somewhere under $325.

Oh I left out the BB's that would be used in the printed linear bearings and ball bearings (maybe 5 cents worth of BB's).

Going this way would also give you some direct experience with 3D printing before you get to the big one.