First printer for specific parametric style projects.

[Baz88]

Hi guys, so i was looking at a project i'm working one and had some quotes drawn up for the printing and i was told that on average, it will cost me $45-55 for each item to print in nylon. The things is i have 20 of these items to print meaning that it will add up to about $1000 and then i have extra pieces which i haven't even asked about yet, so the total cost will work out to be somewhere between $1000 and $1500 and i got to thinking, i wonder if it would be worth just buying a printer myself. Nothing super fancy(i'm not running a business) but enough to do the job.

One thing which has me worried, is that it seems like unless you have a super expensive SLS printer, then the bed size and maximum build area seems quite small for consumer printers.

The things i'm going to be printing are just everyday objects such as voronoi style fruit bowls, and vases and basically things i can put up around the house which will look sculptural but also allow me the opportunity to play around with the printer and experiment with what i can do. I mention this because firstly, the size of the print bed is very important and also the material used. I'd like the flexibility to use whatever material i like, however, given that i'm only looking for an consumer printer, i know that will be limited.

If you google 3d printed fruit bowl, you can see the type of objects i'm talking about. I have been told, that nylon is a good material to use for parametric objects of that shape, giving a better finish, but PLA plastic could be used. That being said, i've never 3d printed before, so i don't really know. Just form images i've seen, plastic looks a little cheap.

Normally i wouldn't have even thought about buying a printer myself, however, i'm thinking if i'm going to spend close to $1500 on one model, is it worth just buying and printing myself and is it expensive to run the machine in terms of material used?

I'd love for some advice on what to look for and some suggestions as well, for something $1500 or less.

Edit: The $ amounts are in Australian dollars

Thanks in advance

[curious aardvark]

easy peasy lemon squeezy - buy one of these: http://wanhaousa.com/products/duplicator-i3-steel-frame
So that's $1100 to spend on filament :-)

Actually most expensive sls printers have a smaller print volume than most desktop fdm machines.
Don't worry about nylon. it's a royal pita and good pla and petg are better for most things anyway.