What is the best 3D Printer for the money?

[3dman]

I'm looking to buy a 3D printer. I was wondering if anyone had any input of which is the best 3D printer for the money, on the market today.

[Larry]

There are a lot of good options out there for under $800. I would personally go with the Printrbot Jr. Version 2 for $699. It does pretty much everything any other printer under $1000 does, and it is easy and simple to use. I've used one and have had no problems with it. Setup was very easy, and there really isn't much to do in terms of maintaining it. It takes a little bit of reading the directions but that is required no matter what printer you purchase.

More details on it at: http://printrbot.com/

Larry

[TeddyYan]

I personally think the Solidoodle is the best, but that's just because that's the only one I have really used a lot.
Teddy

[redrick]

There is no doubt in my mind that Makerbot's replicators are likely the best bang for the buck. They also just came out with a 3D scanner. You can not make copies of objects....remarkable:

http://www.makerbot.com/?gclid=CKrL7...FepZ7AodPF4AFA

[Marcus]

Hello 3dman,
I have a Printrbot LC, a PP3DP UP plus, have build a Reprap Mendel and currently I am building a Printrbot Simple with my class.
The Printrbot are great and do produce usable parts, but on all reprap based printers (including makerbot and others) you will need some tinkering until you get the settings right.
So far the UP is the printer that has the most plug-and-play feel to it. One aspect that can not be mentioned enough times is the software. All printers can print down to 0.1mm layer height or even lower, but in the big test Make-Magazine had a while back only the UP printed the Owl model they used as one of their test objects with the small hole in the beak.
Also, as I print very small models, the break-away support structure works best on the UP, especially with their original OEM ABS that's a bit more expensive. The up mini starts at 899 dollars, so it's not as cheap as other entry level printers.

It really depends on what you plan on printing and what you are expecting, as well as how much time you want to spend tinkering. For some, it's a great aspect of the hobby, and no doubt, it's a good thing that you can repair a reprap based device, while other commercial printers can not be repaired (but you can use a UP as reprap if it dies, someone did this a while ago).

If I had to choose one printer for under or around 1000 dollars, it would be either the UP or a reprap kit with three extruders.
But water soluble support material is overrated, the UP shows what is possible with break away support.
Slicer and other reprap software do als support that now for quite some time, but it's difficult to achieve reliable results for all models. Of course tweakable settings are great, but most of the time the UP presets work well and save me a lot of time.
I print a lot of small earrings, and that works well after getting used to the resrtrains and quirks of a 3d printer.
For larger, not so fragile parts, the Printrbot works great. I printed 3d scans, adapters, repair plastic parts... But the time from design to finished part takes longer, and that does not even take in account the long slicing process with my old, old laptop (in fact, the up software runs on a AMD geode 300MHz/128mb ram just fine while on my Atom 1,6 GHz Netbook Slicer and most others can require an hour for complex models!)

Really nea are the resin printers of course for really small models, but those cost 1000-3000 dollars, so this is the reason why I am so curious about this new Peachy printer, it would be good enough for hobby use and really affordable. But overall I think ABS and PLA printing is a bit less of a hassle regarding mess, price and usabiliy, also the plastic parts are great as depending on thickness and material (abs, PLA, nylon) parts will be rigid or flexible.

So it all boils down to your budget, required build size and technical affinity.

Good luck choosing a 3d printer!

[MrRetupmoc42]

Hello All,

Have you seen the Peachy Printer?
for $100 for the Physical Printer and $45 for the Refill of Resin you get lots for what you pay for...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...printer-and-sc

Take a Look and get one if you can... there very cheap and more accurate than a regular extruding printer...

[Marcus]

Yes, but it wiill have different applications ;-) But +1 for the Peachy...

[DrLuigi]

I wouldnt go for Peachy yet,

Well if you have to much money and wanna sponser a great idea sure,
But imo its still way to low res and doesnt look like its great atm,

But ye Its a great concept and it might evolve as you can now look at Darwin and look what we've got now.

Imo get a Prusa i3 or Solidoodle,

If you go with Prusa i3 i would go with www.makerfarm.com,

It has great instructions and a great support that realy helps you,
The instructions are made with Videos, so someone is actualy making it step on step together with you.

I hope you will find the best printer fitting you ^^

[dizzymonk]

I'm getting a Fabtotum all-in-one printer.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fa...ator/x/4901548

[keithcl]

I have a reprappro mendel and it's a great machine i really love it however I am going to take some pieces from it and make richraps 3dr. It's another great machine and richrap is a very well respected member of the reprap community. Most of the parts are printable and everything is easily scaled up to make a larger print area. My mendel only has 11cm build height but the 3dr i'm going to build will be more like 1 meter build height. This is going to be a beast of a machine but you could always build it to the specs that rich has built which will give you around a 22cm build height.

here is a video of rich explaining his creation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11PVy4AUbeQ

here is a link to his build instructions http://richrap.blogspot.ie/2013_07_01_archive.html

Hope this helps with your decision. for me bigger is better. I have some big plans for that 1 meter build height. can't wait to get it going.