Quote Originally Posted by YosemiteSam View Post
I also have Zortrax M200. I think it is currently the best ABS 3D printer on the market beside Up/Afinia.
Yeah, but it costs $1900 vs. $500. $1400 will pay for a lot of filament, even at US$.10/gram.

My objection to the "only our filaments" is the reason they do it: it means I can only use their filaments. I can't use transparent or translucent filaments, or ninjaflex, or - well, anything else.

But they mean for this to be an entry-level consumer printer, not a makers printer. They offer support to consumers beyond what you can get by asking google for answers. I can see that letting people use whatever filament cost least on ebay when they bought it would make the support job a lot harder - and hence more expensive. They don't seem to have done anything specifically to prevent people from using other filaments, just to make support easier: yes, it detects when there is a filament cartridge inserted, which makes sense to me. Yes, the chip in the cartridge reports on filament type and remaining filament, both of which seem like useful information to have to prevent printing with the wrong material or without enough material. This information isn't encrypted or otherwise protected, just not documented.

To me, this makes sense as a business model: You sell the printer at cost or just above to get as many sold as possible. Makers who buy it and hack it to use other firmware or cheap filament probably won't be asking for support, so just make the user base look bigger. Consumers - the real target market - who use support will stay with the proprietary filament, so we price that to cover the cost of providing support. How much that is, and whether the US$.10/gram cost is a rip-off you can't really say without knowing about the support you're paying for.

Of course, that's speculation. They could be pricing the printers below cost, expecting to make it up on the filament, or something equally sleazy. In that case, they'll be doing things to prevent hacking the printer, like encrypting what's on the chip.

Or maybe there isn't a really a market for a consumer 3d printer, in which case only hackers will buy the printer, and who knows what they'll do.