Hi,

I understand your situation and the same was done at a university I worked for, the Connex printer was only made available to master students and for important models - experiments were only done in special cases because even a small model would already cost $100 or over. +the material gets fragile and brittle so is only suitable for prototypes and demonstrators.

The small printers are underestimated and I recommend the Ultimaker Original. I own one myself and after several years it still works great. It is very accurate and you can print layers as thin as 0.06mm which is very detailed. With dissolvable filament and dual extrusion kit you solve the issue of distortions due to overhangs. With the Z-unlimited system you can print to unlimited heights - http://www.rooiejoris.nl/z-unlimited/ . Part quality also hugely depends on the filament used and in my experience Colorfabb and 3DOM are by far the best filaments. With a heated bed you can do ABS, PC and other engineering plastics. To me the extra build volume doesn't justify the much higher price of the larger printers, since 1. the printer will not be intrinsically better or faster and 2. there is software to slice up larger parts into chunks that can then be put together to create the same large part as you would get from a larger printer.

Another option is an SLS printer which works faster and produces better parts but is for a similar budget limited to a small build volume, and you will need some ventilation. Again, you can simply glue or fasten multiple parts together. Sintratec is one of the producers.