Need help buying first 3d printer

[edwardmj06]

Hey guys,

Im planning to buy a 3D printer that cost $3000 or less, but I want a good 3D printer, I was thinking about the makerbot replicator 2 5th gen but I have seen a lot of bad reviews and those things, so I need your help. Im buying it because Im planning to start a business and I need a good one.


THANNKS.

[curious aardvark]

ultimaker or one of these
http://3d15.typeamachines.com/series...189.1432131711

To be honest in that price range you're seriously stuck for choice. under no circumstances whatsoever would I touch a 5th gen makerbot.
if you want something that build volume but a lot better get a flashforge creator pro.

[dklassen]

Stick with an Ultimaker 2 or Makergear M2.

[Mortimer452]

I agree the Ultimaker is an excellent machine. Stay away from Makerbot, they are quickly alienating themselves from the rest of the community. The only decent contribution they have made to 3D printing since their original product is Thingiverse, nothing but downhill from there.

[Todd-67]

I have a flash forge and have nothing bad to say about them. They are good machines for the money. The Ultimaker has better resolution and specs. but I don't have any experience with them. I will say to stay away from 3D Systems and other proprietary machines.

The Makergear stuff is made local to me. I may have to check them out.

[dunginhawk]

For the size, i HIGHLY HIGHLY recomend the Flashforce Creator Pro... Its quality is really fantastic... Its priced really well, and its a great quality printer.. I wouldnt touch anything else in the category for the money

[curious aardvark]

well with that budget he could buy 2 creator pros :-)

A lot of it depends what you want to make and how big you envision making things and whether or not you can be bothered with dual nozzles.

Things to bear in mind.
Flashforge machines are not open source as far as software is concerned. ie: you either use replicator-g (bad idea), makerbot desktop (pretty good) or simplify3d (costs money but is my 1st choice from all available slicers).
Also the flashforges are very much hands on.
Manual bed calibration and can be tricky to use at first.

The advantages of the series 1 pro are that it has a much larger build volume, auto calibration. Will use any slicer - they use cura, which is good.
It doesn't have a screen or control panel - which I have to say I'd really miss if I had a printer that didn't have them.
But it's much more in the way of a plug'n'play machine that the makerbot clones are. It even comes with a 12 month warranty - almost like living in england :-)

The makerbot clones are more in the way of: plug'fiddle'play'scratch-your-head-and-then-post-a-questiion-round-here :-)

[kudo3D]

You should check out our Titan 1, with a patent-pending technology, which is the only versatile high-resolution professional-grade stereolithography printer in the market for different applications. The Titan 1 specs are comparable to that of $50,000 printers. All for $2999.

http://www.kudo3d.com/blog/portfolio...rtfolioID=4953
Here is a picture of biomedical tissue scaffolds we printed for a biomedical research institute. It's only 1mm by 2mm! Additionally, we also can print the tallest up to 10 inches tall and have the biggest build volume for all desktop SLA 3D printers.
Here is a comparison with other printers in the same range:
http://www.kudo3d.com/products/ (scroll to the bottom) If you have any questions, you can email me at catherinepark@kudo3d.com.

[The Grey's Studios]

I went with Flashforge Creator Pro 3D. I like it so much that when I can I'm buying another one to speed up production.

Make sure you get Simplify 3D with it, you won't be disappointed.

John Thuot II
The Grey's Studios