Closest thing to an industrial grade printer?

[DBFIU]

Hello,

What would be your suggestion on choosing an enthusiast grade printer that would be the closest thing to a bigger stratasys machine?

What are the key differences between a stratasys and a hobby grade printer?

Would an Ultimaker 2 be the closest thing?

[richardphat]

Why do you even need industrial grade? For what purpose? What's your requirement?

One blatant is the support assistance, size of machine, less worries about failure during print.....
Mjol knows more than I do, since he has his sst

[Mjolinor]

Sold it :bawling:

But I have to say that one of the reasons for selling it was that since I messed with my Wanhao, closing it in and adding a chamber heater, there really wasn't much difference between the Stratasys SST and the Wanhao. The other reason was "she who must be obeyed" whinging about me having the loft, the cellar and now a lump in the spare bedroom.

Main difference has to be :
1) depth of your pockets for a commercial one
2) lack of ability to mess with a commercial one

[awerby]

I'm leaning towards the Leapfrog printer as the best alternative: http://www.lpfrg.com/ They seem much better built than the vast majority of offerings out there, with solid metal construction and ballscrews, some of them have a very large build volume, and they claim to have worked out a system of water-soluble PVA support laid down by a separate extruder head. I'm going to order one and test this out for myself before I start reselling them, though - stay tuned...

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

[oklok]

Andrew, if you need a pro grade FDM printer, this may be in handy for you:
Ideanow Ultimate



or
Focus L8

[curious aardvark]

any dual extruder can use pva filament.

I seem to recall leapfrogs getting mixed reviews.

A lot of it is how much the owner is prepared to do themselves and how many of them don't want to understand what they're doing.
At the moment - the machine operator needs to understand what they're doing, with pretty much any machine.

[truly_bent]

Awerby;
Are you sure the Leapfrog printers use ballscrews? I checked the site and found no mention of them. Of course you know that ballscrews are not leadscrews. Leadscrews are usually, but not always, roll-formed while ballscrews are always ground to high precision. The result is that ballscrews usually have higher positioning accuracy. Ballscrews are always used on CNC machines.

I was excited for a moment thinking that Leapfrog had put ballscrews in their printers, but i haven't yet seen any printer manufacturer using them.

[awerby]

Hi Mr. Bent;

I looked at some of the larger Leapfrog printers at a recent Inside 3D printing show; the screws they used looked a lot like ballscrews to me. But you seem to have some mistaken ideas about ballscrews.

Awerby;
Are you sure the Leapfrog printers use ballscrews? I checked the site and found no mention of them. Of course you know that ballscrews are not leadscrews.

[I don't know that. A leadscrew is any screw used for power transmission in a machine. Ballscrews are often used as leadscrews, although they are sometimes contrasted. ]

Leadscrews are usually, but not always, roll-formed while ballscrews are always ground to high precision.

[That's not true. There are different grades of ballscrews; some are rolled while others are ground. You can find low-precision ballscrews used for things like garage door openers. Nook Industries, for example, has both rolled and ground ball screws in a number of grades: http://www.nookindustries.com/Produc...rew-Products.]

The result is that ballscrews usually have higher positioning accuracy. Ballscrews are always used on CNC machines.

[There are plenty of CNC machines that use acme and other types of precision-rolled leadscrews, which are more accurate than inexpensive ballscrews.]

I was excited for a moment thinking that Leapfrog had put ballscrews in their printers, but i haven't yet seen any printer manufacturer using them.

[I'm not the only person who thinks they're using them for the Z axis motion:

http://bikealive.nl/leapfrog-creatr.html

And they look like ballscrews with ball nuts:

http://nicklievendag.com/wp-content/...7-1024x768.jpg

But it's curious that Leapfrog doesn't mention them in its specifications, although they do have them in their store (apparently for free) http://www.lpfrg.com/ball-bearing-spindle-444-1-mm .]

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

[truly_bent]

Okay. Thanks for clarifying that

[DBFIU]

The Wanhao 5S seems like a real winner. Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I really like the printer and for 1700 bucks, hard to beat.

How does that printer compare to the ultimaker 2? Does the 700 dollar price difference justify the ultimaker?

My reason for a high end printer is, I own an engineering and design firm and I need to offer professional grade prototyping, but I dont have the money right now for a 30,000 dollar stratasys.