Can't decide between Replicator 5th Gen, Ultimaker 2, and Robo3D R1

[dm7864]

Airwolf 3D HD2x is dual head and 12 x 8 x 11 with .06 mm layer height. So far they have answered all my questions and have printed in ABS,PLA and now nylon with no problems

[csshih]

Airwolf 3D HD2x is dual head and 12 x 8 x 11 with .06 mm layer height. So far they have answered all my questions and have printed in ABS,PLA and now nylon with no problems

tempting, but I don't know how I feel about the acrylic? case. and it being $1000 more. Not sure I'd want to wait 3-4 weeks either! Waiting on reviews!

[tony030512]

tempting, but I don't know how I feel about the acrylic? case. and it being $1000 more. Not sure I'd want to wait 3-4 weeks either! Waiting on reviews!

Also waiting on more info I want the AW3d hf2x

[jimc]

Yeah printers with acrylic frames always look real appealing but its brittle, cracks easily and the high thermal expansion is trouble for a 3d printer. Its really not the best. Great for marketing though since its pretty and has alot of flash. People eat it up. The airwolf has just a ton of printed components as well. Basically everything on it is printed. Not saying its a bad printer but those are some things i notice that just arent the best choice.

[tony030512]

tempting, but I don't know how I feel about the acrylic? case. and it being $1000 more. Not sure I'd want to wait 3-4 weeks either! Waiting on reviews!

Yeah printers with acrylic frames always look real appealing but its brittle, cracks easily and the high thermal expansion is trouble for a 3d printer. Its really not the best. Great for marketing though since its pretty and has alot of flash. People eat it up. The airwolf has just a ton of printed components as well. Basically everything on it is printed. Not saying its a bad printer but those are some things i notice that just arent the best choice.

What would you recommend?? I want a printer with dual extruder...and can print multiple materials price range is approx 3k

[redhatmatt]

Ok, I stumbled onto this thread and read the whole thing. Wow...

I've owned an Ultimaker original for two years, I added a heated bed and a dual extruder long ago. Now they are selling the heated bed on a new Ultimaker Original +. The shipping date is long but that will shorten. They are also starting to start operations in the states out of Tennessee by a long time community member. I love love love my Ultimaker. You can't go wrong with a printer that is so open source and meticulously supported (even if they went out of business you are fine for like forever you can source the parts), has such an active community (so many modifications already available to trick it out, so much advice, so much support), provides such high quality prints at such high speeds.... The Ultimaker 2 is great too if you can afford it - I have many friends with them and am a member of a few labs with them... they are a little slicker but if you don't have that kind of coin and want a seriously capable, future DIY printer go with the UM1.

I also have had (for a little over six months) a Airwolf 3DHD including the .35 nozzle for an extra 35.00 (oh my ), which then I upgraded to the 3DHDx (Polycarb single head) and finally to the 3DHD2x all on the same original 3DHD. Now I have two extra heads. Yeah they aren't 100% open source but I researched it enough to see that if they ever (hope not they are nice people) went out of business (that seems HIGHLY unlikely) I could source this one as well as far as getting parts. The acrylic is thick! -- and great, I've made similar acrylic cutouts to do mods at my local maker facility. The airwolf uses a RAMBO board (which also just uses Marlin and Arduino) and it's basically a Bowden design. The Viki controller is made by someone else in Irvine - Pancautt Designs - but you could use an Ulticontroller.

The argument I read on fear of 3mm filament is kind of silly. I actually think for these types of setups it's superior to 1.75mm and it's easy to get everywhere. Not being available in the US??? Wha??? The highest quality great stuff in the US: matterhackers & ultimachine.

To Tony above, for 3K --- for a dual extruder with a heated bed... seriously consider the Ultimaker Original and upgrade the head to a dual with the kit, you are looking at around 1500-1700 and you can spend the rest on filament.

PS. I would not go with a Makerbot considering everything out there... I should say the Replicator 2x. I've had a ton of experience with them... bad support, tendency to break and then exacerbate that with again... bad support... and their tendency towards proprietary everything means == less community sharing - and or the capability to do so... plus the way they've been grabbing ideas and patenting them off of thingiverse... the list goes on... --however if all you want to do is do PLA then the new ones do look like could be hassle free - but that isn't what most of you are after. The zortrax???? yeah that's like a super bad version of what makerbot is doing these days (as far as their proprietary, unproven, questionable ethical "inventions") but with no real community and barely alive for very long.... the fact that Dell bought 500 of them makes me stay away further, since when did corporations get smart on buying things (not much from what I've seen and I've worked for a good chunk of the fortune 500) -- they are the same "groups" buying Makerbot Replicator 2x's by the bundle so they can sit and be broken... I'm sure Dell did so before moving on to the newest line of the same thing but worst with the Zortrax line!

[Trhuster]

The zortrax???? yeah that's like a super bad version of what makerbot is doing these days but with no community and barely alive.... the fact that Dell bought 500 of them makes me stay away further, since when did corporations get smart on buying things (not much from what I've seen and I've worked for a good chunk of the fortune 500) -- they are the same "groups" buying Makerbot Replicator 2x's by the bundle so they can sit and be broken... I'm sure Dell did so before moving on to the newest line of the same thing but worst with the Zortrax line!

You making conclusions that not make sense. If you want a ABS printer today Zortrax is one off the best in this pricerange. Regarding community, it is there but printer for the most parts works without any big problems so not always so much to write about. But if you ask something you will always get an answer from some user in Zortrax forum.

[redhatmatt]

You making conclusions that not make sense. If you want a ABS printer today Zortrax is one off the best in this pricerange. Regarding community, it is there but printer for the most parts works without any big problems so not always so much to write about. But if you ask something you will always get an answer from some user in Zortrax forum.

I don't think they make sense to you as english is clearly not your first language. If you read the rest of this thread you'd read what I read and see that they aren't real popular with this thread. You are right in one area, I am basing my conclusions on what I have read and I do not own one... nor do I plan on owning one but as I said I read the whole thread and the feedback isn't good on that company.

First of all the person I was replying to asked about getting a dual extruder. As far as I can tell they have no dual extruder and from what I have read they are being asked to fix other core things promised to their users first before even moving on to that feature.

"But if you ask something you will always get an answer from some user in Zortrax forum." -- did you read anything anyone wrote in the last 75% of this thread??? Like the owners and managements are control freaks who delete, lock and erase parts of threads? Maybe they are all lying but I seriously doubt it. Maybe you mean some user based forum no one wrote about vs. the Zortrax company forum others did write about, eventually negatively.

If I don't make sense to YOU... then ask me a question to clarify what is confusing you, I'll try and help clarify my conclusions to you.

In this case many people wrote many negative things about the Zortrax printers including bad things on their support, their forum and made fun of their claims as far as how detailed it can print as far as being on an XY axis, also they are very very proprietary on their software and such as written by others... THEREFORE: I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND THIS P-R-I-N-T-E-R company to do business with. I really hope this is clear and makes at least a tiny amount of sense in how I drew my conclusion.

--I edited this part after I thought about other possible angles Trhuster maybe coming from... if you have lots of money and don't care about having to replace them on your own dime then this could be a good fit. If you live in Poland this might be a great fit. If you work at Dell and they'll buy more replacements for you without waiting. There's probably a lot of other Niche use cases I haven't thought of, but I hope I've written clearly how I got to my own conclusion about considering that printer in my personal recommendations list. --

Trhuster -- if you like it and your happy with it then great, I just think down the road you are going to have a lot more problems with it than I am with mine. My point was in how well run open source helps end consumers with maintaining their own products and helps with growth. It has downsides but overall it's an awesome system to be a part of... the closer a company is with sharing plans and using standards based open hardware the more we as consumers are not worried about fixing or truly "owning" our machines.

[Trhuster]

I don't think they make sense to you as english is clearly not your first language. If you read the rest of this thread you'd read what I read and see that they aren't real popular with this thread. You are right in one area, I am basing my conclusions on what I have read and I do not own one... nor do I plan on owning one but as I said I read the whole thread and the feedback isn't good on that company.

First of all the person I was replying to asked about getting a dual extruder. As far as I can tell they have no dual extruder and from what I have read they are being asked to fix other core things promised to their users first before even moving on to that feature.

"But if you ask something you will always get an answer from some user in Zortrax forum." -- did you read anything anyone wrote in the last 75% of this thread??? Like the owners and managements are control freaks who delete, lock and erase parts of threads? Maybe they are all lying but I seriously doubt it. Maybe you mean some user based forum no one wrote about vs. the Zortrax company forum others did write about, eventually negatively.

If I don't make sense to YOU... then ask me a question to clarify what is confusing you, I'll try and help clarify my conclusions to you.

In this case many people wrote many negative things about the Zortrax printers including bad things on their support, their forum and made fun of their claims as far as how detailed it can print as far as being on an XY axis, also they are very very proprietary on their software and such as written by others... THEREFORE: I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND THIS P-R-I-N-T-E-R company to do business with. I really hope this is clear and makes at least a tiny amount of sense in how I drew my conclusion.

--I edited this part after I thought about other possible angles Trhuster maybe coming from... if you have lots of money and don't care about having to replace them on your own dime then this could be a good fit. If you live in Poland this might be a great fit. If you work at Dell and they'll buy more replacements for you without waiting. There's probably a lot of other Niche use cases I haven't thought of, but I hope I've written clearly how I got to my own conclusion about considering that printer in my personal recommendations list. --

Trhuster -- if you like it and your happy with it then great, I just think down the road you are going to have a lot more problems with it than I am with mine. My point was in how well run open source helps end consumers with maintaining their own products and helps with growth. It has downsides but overall it's an awesome system to be a part of... the closer a company is with sharing plans and using standards based open hardware the more we as consumers are not worried about fixing or truly "owning" our machines.

No my first language is not English, it is Swedish. I had my Zortrax for 8 months now and i know all the storys about them, good and bad. Is they the perfect company with the perfect printer? No, ofcourse they are not. Does i always agre with them? No i don't. Is zortrax M200 a good printer? Yes it is, and i would buy it again today without hesitation.

I know only one printer that i think can be better and that is Clone R1 made by Carl Raffle that i have preorded. Check it out if you are searching for a open source printer. http://shop.raffle.ch/shop/clone-r1-...91bb-189348425

[curious aardvark]

on an alternative note, for $3000 you could buy FOUR flashforge creators. Dual heads, heated bed, will print with just about anything.
You really don't get that much more for your money with the more expensive machines.

If I was going to buy a bowden setup printer I'd probably go with 3mm filament. Just gives more push and pull for retraction so you should get less stringing and faster porinting than with the 1.75 mm bowden setup.
And I suspect 3mm printers have less hassle with the flexible filaments as well.