Please provide me feedback on 3D printers

[DavidO]

Hello,

My company is looking to purchase a 3D printer for making models of our equipment for marketing purposes. We build equipment for use in the oil and gas industry so all our stuff is big and will obviously be scaled down significantly from my 1:1 SolidWorks model for printing.
I have a budget of up to $15K ($5-10K would be ideal) and am leaning towards ABS plastic as the model medium, but am open to opinions on other materials. These will be used in meetings, as giveaways to clients, etc. so will be handled pretty frequently so a reasonable amount of durability is desired. I am familiar with the Dimension line of ABS printers and looked at the Uprint models but these still seem to have the same crappy 0.010 layer resolution that they had 10 years ago when I used to sell them. I am looking for a higher resolution as there will be small features on the assembly due to scaling that I would like to come across in the printed model.

Some of the units I have researched online are:
Ultimaker 2 (seems to be reviewed well online)
Cube Pro (mixed reviews online)
Makerbot Replicator 2x (have read bad reviews about this unit)
Uprint SE (seems like a scaled down version of the older Dimension units and consumables are outrageously priced as before)

So to summarize:

• up to $15K budget
• higher resolution
• ABS plastic (but open to other materials)
• reliability and ease of servicing
• consumables reasonably priced
• reasonable build size

Many thanks for your assistance.

Regards,
David O.

[richardphat]

Do also remember when it comes to repair or maintenance, how long it would take to make it run again. Because sometime when you run out of spare parts, you cannot wait for a week for shipping and such. Sometime you have to improvise and repair within the same days.

When you mention small features, you got to define more specifically. Because what you have in mind is based on melt plastic printer, it is a big concern if you want to assemble. Printing small details is like torture test, tolerancing is usually off by 0.3-0.4mm, therefore you have to iterate several prints to get the job dones.

[DavidO]

Thanks for your reply...

When I say small features, I mean taking a piece of equipment that is say 8 ft W x 12 ft L x 20 ft H and scaling it down to say 1:12 or 1:16 scale factor to fit within the build envelope. More than likely I will have create a simplified model for the 3D printing. In regards to tolerances this is not of a concern to me as the parts will not be used as prototypes or the like.

[Geoff]

Makerbot Replicator 2x (have read bad reviews about this unit)

Ignore them, it's the new Gen5 you want to steer away from. If you have up to a 15k budget, an Ultimaker 2 would do nicely.

[richardphat]

Ah ok, so basically around 4-5 inches. Then it is not a big problem. I thought for a second you were trying to go for 1/8 " which is annoying to deal with.

Further, have you consider to get 2 printers? Just to boost the efficiency. You'll actually hate to delay your project for having your unique printer down.

[GameProps]

As for my opinion on a good printer to go with I would recommend the Robo R1. I have seen good examples of prints coming from this one. I haven't been able to ever play with a printer but I've done a lot of research and it's always been a cross between that and a Solidoodle for affordability and size. Now if I wanted a Rocstock, I would go with this one https://bootsindustries.com/shop/biv2/ it has a great price for a good build space, know of someone that recently purchased one. These are all FDM printers. And most FDM printers are usually around the 1k or less range.

Now I don't know much about the SLA or SLS printers, but the quality is excellent on most of them. The material costs and the machines are expensive imo.

The one printer I've had a eye on myself for quite a while has been the MCor Iris that uses office paper to 3D print, the only downside is the cost for it. They were supposed to be launching printing services at some point in the USA at Staples stores but that never happened I guess.

[3DPBuser]

Seems like PLA will do just fine. And 2 or 3 printers, for backup or simultaneous operation.

The Wanhao D5s mini would do it.