Printer with budget $500

[lucastrick]

thanks for advice

[StlLooking]

Good luck with that, they seem to all be too elitist here to bother with anything under $20K.

[Feign]

Printrbot has a few that are pretty close to your price point, and the Printrbot Simple Maker Edition is a kit that is $400, but has some, (and by that I mean a lot of) assembly required.

The downside to the Printrbot printers is the very small build envelope. If you don't mind assembling completely from scratch, the RepRap Mendel is almost exactly $500 to make unless you're going for premium materials.

In general printers that are currently on shelves will run you $800 to $2000 depending on the brand, and price does not equal quality. There are quite a number of Crowdfunding campaigns that promise printers in the sub-$500 range, but for the most part, they are a story that doesn't have a happy ending. (Printrbot was one of the very, very few Kickstarter budget printers that did everything right. and has succeeded for it, so it can be done.)

StlLooking, I have no idea where you're getting this kind of impression. Almost every printer that is even seriously considered around here for home use is in the sub-$4000 price range. Some printers you will be warned away from around here are the Phoenix 3D and the QU-BD printers. There are some other Crowdfunding campaigns that also get a bit of (sometimes deserved) derision and naysaying here as well, but not specifically for being cheap.

[Marm]

I picked up my XYZ Davinci for under $600 with some extras on Amazon. Comes ready to print (for the most part) out of the box. I chose it over the printrbot for a few reasons,

1) Comes preassembled for the same price as the Printrbot preassembled, but does 8" cubes vs 4".

2) Ease of use, it's pretty much a beginners machine from what I can see and the software is pretty simple. Their tech support is pretty good, if not annoyingly so, if you do encounter issues.

3) It looks a helluva lot better on the shelf than the Printrbot. That's usually not a big deal, but when you're down to the bottom of your list of pros v cons, cosmetics do have their place.

One major downside is the filament comes in a proprietary cartridge. While it can be hacked to run off a spool, I have not yet. The quality and amount of filament you get is less than a similarly priced spool.

[3DPBuser]

8" cubes vs 4"

Wow that is much bigger than I thought.

It looks a helluva lot better

Yea I think Printrbot put the "looks" money into the machine instead.

proprietary cartridge

This I have found has been the deal breaker for almost everyone. And is probably why DV can sell for a lower price (make up for it with filament sales). I personally however don't want to hack anything.