Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

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3DForensics
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Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by 3DForensics »

Hello All,

I have been considering buying a 3D printer for a long time now but one of my friends has a 3D Printing business with high end machines and so I have been doing all my printing through him. However, I think I want to finally just do it and one of the problems I have been having is narrowing down my search.

Here is what I would like to consider:
This is really for hobby use, so single colour is ok
Accuracy is not too big a concern but more is better
Price within a few thousand dollars...I can always use a $60k machine through my colleague.
Decent print volume.
Robustness and ease of use...I don't want to be fighting clogged nozzles and breakdowns. I have plenty of other things to do with my time.

If any of you have experience in this area please post your recommendations with links so I can read up on the hardware.

Much appreciated,

Eugene


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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by dhirota »

The 3D printing market is changing hourly especially at the low end and high end.

We have a MCOR color 3D printer, which will take up space and cost more than a few US$, but produces great color objects.

My suggestion would be to use you friend's 3D printer until next spring 2016, to see who is still in business for support and what new, better, cheaper 3D printers will be introduced for the laser scanning business.
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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by 3DForensics »

Darn Dennis, I have been waiting for about 2 years now! Well, I guess another few months won't hurt, but I do wish to do some more background research.


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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by colhum1 »

3DForensics wrote:Darn Dennis, I have been waiting for about 2 years now! Well, I guess another few months won't hurt, but I do wish to do some more background research.
There's lots of choice out there Eugene but still quite limited for home use.
Take a look at some of the review sites...we always compare UK, EU and US based sites for a fair comparison.

These sites are pretty balanced:


Thumbnail Screenshots by Thumbshots


Thumbnail Screenshots by Thumbshots


Thumbnail Screenshots by Thumbshots

Happy hunting :)

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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by Macgyver »

I think you would find this helpful:
http://www.productchart.com/3d_printers/

You can plot the various printers by accuracy, price, maximum size, speed etc and also filter them out by those attributes.
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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by 3DForensics »

Thanks for the links. The Ultimaker 2 is looking like it is a decent 3D Printer with decent reviews in more than one website. I remember seeing some parts off of this printer when I was last in Germany and they looked pretty good with a decent build volume. The resin printers and composite or more exotic materials will likely be the way of the future, but for the moment, plastic parts are fine for what I need.

If any of you have parts or experiences with other printers, would love to see pics of parts or any good, bad and the ugly stories.

Cheers,

Eugene


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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by WWilford »

Hello Eugene,

I bought the Form1 at the kickstarter campaign. There were a few issues with it that seem to be mostly resolved with the Form1+ such as an improved laser, faster speeds, and also more resin options. The build size is a little small. The quality of the prints are very nice. If you decide to purchase on be careful of leaking resin trays, mine leaked into the body of the printer. I plan on sending it back and having it upgraded to the Form1+. I would anticipate their next step would be to build a model with a larger build envelope (I hope).
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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by 3DForensics »

I think the form1+ looks quite appealing, but I just saw that the Ultimaker 2 has an extended version. I think the larger build volume could be rather interesting for my applications. What is your experience with the UM2? Do they have a lot of issues with nozzles and such. Also, how is their software?
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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by dhirota »

We have a MCOR IRIS that will produce lots of ICC colors (water based ink using an EPSON B-310), water based glue, on COSTCO paper and carbide cutting blades. We pay US$30 per case (1,000 sheets, 100 microns thick) at COSTCO, so the material cost is very low (less than US$10 for any part shown here). The disposal cost is low, since it is placed into the paper recycling bin with no chemical clean up or melting plastic fumes to deal with in an office environment.

The major problem of most current 3D printers is the speed. Limited build size and height are also problems, which can be over come by electronically sectioning the parts into pieces semi-automatically.

Here are screen shots of a few parts that we have done. The work flow is still in progress to go from point clouds directly to 3D color prints.
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Re: Suggestion for A Decent Home 3D Printer

Post by 3DForensics »

I had heard about paper printing but had never seen it in action. (I just watched some YouTube videos).

The terrain projects look really cool and I can see how colour makes a huge difference for those types of models. What's the maintenance like on the machine and what is the cost of ink? Does it print only on the edges of the model? Do you finish the model with any kind of sealing material or does the glue also act to somehow provide additional protection?


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