I am helping advise a company in South India on the purchase of a 3D printer. I was involved in this years ago, trying to find a suitable 3D printer for prosthetic eyes. That search went well, until we tried to find a 3D Scanner - back then, we couldn't find what we needed.


What I'm looking for in this forum, is what kind of list of requirements do we need, in order to select an appropriate printer. I think I know some of them, but maybe I'm missing others that are equally important before they actually start looking for "the" best printer for their needs.

I have asked them to give me the size of the largest part they expect to print. (That makes me wonder if printing small parts will be limited by a printer that is "too big".)

I need to find out what kinds of parts they plan to print. I know they are likely to make fairly small prototype parts, and at some point some of those parts might be made in a larger quantity. I see printing speed as being important, but not the "most important". Slower speeds for better quality would be fine. The parts would mostly be connected to medical parts related to eye surgery and care.

Quality is very important. I have seen some parts they want to make prototypes of that are about an inch in length. I can post a photo of one of these, if it would help. I think the quality of the part is near the top of the list in importance.

One of the decisions that is needed is how many extruders to get. Having watched the Stratasys videos, and their use of "support material" to allow printing parts including unsupported areas, to me that seems like a must-have. Is this true?

They have told me they would like a mechanism to verify that the printing "table" is level, before printing starts. Is this something common?

Finally, there is a question of what materials to use for printing. They have told me they would prefer a printer that accepts a wide variety of printing material. I know very little about this, other than it is unlikely that they will need to print metal.






There is also a question of cost, and the budget. My own preference would be to start with the requirements, and only then consider the cost, and if the cost is too high, decide which requirements might be needed to bring down the cost. This can happen later.

They also want to purchase a 3D Scanner. I'll leave that to a separate discussion.

They plan to use their existing 3D software for designing the parts.


If I were to make a "check list" for selecting a printer, are there things I have left off the notes above, that they need to think about before selecting a suitable printer?