How much $$$$ on a printer that can produce customer facing quality?

[Recypher]

Food for thought here, thanks all for taking the time to reply with your constructive comments and help...exactly why I love forums!

[curious aardvark]

To answer your actual question.

Yes an ultimaker 2 would be more than good enough.

The finish on a part printed at 0.2mm let alone 0.1mm is actually very good.
Don't get bogged down by the layer height nazis. As long as your product functions as it should, the vast majority of customers (ie: everybody who doesn't owna 3d printer) just won't give a crap.
And some of us who do, just don't understand the layer height obsession either.

On top of that you can easily do a little post processing. Either with abs slurry (acetone and abs filament) or one of the commercial finishing solutions. The abs paint is real simple and gives a very smooth shiny fnish and drys in seconds.
I haven't tried any of the commercial finishes. But for abs I'd go the acetone slurry route anyway.

100 would be easy enough. The ultimakers can print at a decent speed and quality and you can probably get several parts on the bed at a time. And while that takes longer than printing them one at a time - the quality is generally better due to increased layer cooling time and you can just bugger off and leave it to it.

So yep as long as the build volume meets your criteria - ultimaker is a great machine. They don't keep winning awards by accident (no matter what people might tell you).
ANd no I don't have one - can't afford it. :-)

[Recypher]

Well I just pulled the trigger on an Ultimaker 2, so I guess I am going to become more active on this forum

[sharon]

THinking about the same thing now.

[Recypher]

I will post up experiences with it, etc but they said its a 4 week lead time....and they have got to send it to Australia....and its xmas break coming up so I guess I am going to have to wait a while.

Have to say I am a bit excited to see what it can do.

[3DPBuser]

Another route with that printer is to print molds, then polish the molds to a slick finish, then pour resin into them.

Might take a week to finish the mold, but then you could pop out 10 parts a day, depending on the resin. And, you could make multiple molds.

[wackyvorlon]

Personally, I'm a big fan of lulzbot. The TAZ 4 is very nicely built. I've found reliably printing with layer heights below 0.2mm is very difficult, if the ABS isn't being fed fast enough the viscosity climbs.

[curious aardvark]

Personally, I'm a big fan of lulzbot. The TAZ 4 is very nicely built. I've found reliably printing with layer heights below 0.2mm is very difficult, if the ABS isn't being fed fast enough the viscosity climbs.

I can print easily between 0.2 - 0.1. With a flashforge creator. The lulzbot doesn't sound that great to me if it struggles at that.

[jimc]

Yeah i have heard some people like thisnprinter and others hate it. It looks like a well built machine so im too sure where the shortcomings are. One person i talk to has 3 printers with the taz being one and he says its the worst one if the bunch. Says print quality it really bad compared ti his others. Again, im nit sure why or what the issues are. .2mm layer height is more of a draft quality. A decent printer should print clean below .1mm