And it's gone. Srsly Ultimaker ​ you just killed it.

I find it hilarious that @Ultimaker can design such an elegant site, but youmagine looks like such shit.

This is a pretty typical price point for a “professional desktop” printer these days. Anybody comparing this to a Prusa i3 is nuts, it’s a totally different market segment. TAM Series 1 is $3600. Fusion3 F400 is $4500. It’s not an unreasonable price IF you can provide the level of reliability, fit&finish, and tech support that professional users require.

@Ryan_Carlyle Simple question: What exactly does the UM3 provide that a prebuilt Prusa i3 MK2 doesn’t? I don’t own any of these, so I am actually happy to learn. But from what it seems and from what I’ve heard about the Prusa i3 MK2 and Ultimaker in general - it does not provide anything more except the looks.

Only because you can it doesn’t mean that you have to charge that price. However, yes, I’m realistic enough that this is business reality.

@Daid_Braam Since I’m an engineer myself I know that it can be an unthankfull job in times like these. So again, regardless of my opinion on the price or anything else: From what I’ve heard you’re doing great products and I’m absolutely sure that this one will be even better. Also the work on your free software is more than appreciated! Keep up the good work - and please, please stay as open as you can :slight_smile:

@Nils_Hesse I can’t speak for what UM offers for intangibles (like application engineering, extensive tech support, and training) which is usually a big part of the cost and value proposition for the pro user segment. Maybe @Daid_Braam can comment. Five to ten hours of expert phone consultant support (including stuff like “how do I print this really complicated thing”) is worth the entire price of a Prusa mkII. That’s the true value provided by somebody like Fusion3, and why their prices are relatively high for the BOM cost. (Their hardware design is really good, but that’s not the real differentiator.) An architect or engineer isn’t likely to be willing to spend time on forums wading through endless piles of tribal knowledge and bad advice, and shouldn’t have to suffer through sixteen rounds of emails with low-paid Makerbot tech support. But, again, I don’t know what UM offers there compared to somebody else with good basic tech support like Printrbot.

In terms of what has been advertised in the UM3 hardware/software, a pain-free workflow for multi-material printing (specifically PVA dissolvable support) is utterly huge. GOOD dissolvable support is one of the last things Stratasys has up on the consumer printer market. Again, architects and engineers shouldn’t be designing around overhang and bridge geometry constraints or breaking off and cleaning up same-material support. It’s a poor use of professional time and expertise.

The UM gantry can print at perhaps twice the speed of an i3 with the same quality. The Mendel architecture is pretty bad as far as mechanical performance is concerned; it’s a low-cost and low-parts-count design, not a high-performance design like a UM gantry or CoreXY. That may or may not matter depending on your usage case.

The swappable print heads could be good or bad, I dunno. Depends on how reliable they turn out to be.

That’s just the obvious stuff that comes to mind based on what we know so far. I don’t have one in front of me.

Love the comments, makes me fkin laugh… I can just see some people freaking the fk out and typing furiously to respond. (_)

@Nils_Hesse The difference is likely reliability and support. Engineers with a few years experience are worth $100-150/hour to their companies (once you factor in benefits on top of wages). At that rate if you can promise to save even 20 hours of the end user’s time, the Ultimaker becomes well worth it over a Prusa or similar.

@Nathan_Walkner how do you know? We have a Mk2. Josef gave it to us directly at MakerFaire. It’s a great machine.

None of you have used the UM3 yet. So why the hell are you chiming in on it?

As I said, value is what is important. Since none of you have used it yet, all you can talk about is price.

I’ll pose this thought experiment again:

Suppose the UM3 turns out to be the best printer on the market in terms of print quality, reliability, and ease-of-use. And, assume that it’s significantly better than anything else out there.
Then is $3600 too much?

The Mk2 is a fantastic machine. It’s also a great value.
But, there’s absolutely no reason the UM3 can’t also be a great value at the list price.

How about you all just wait until you actually hear about the damn machine before you assume it won’t be worth the money?

Well, as someone who has used a demo unit for about 3 weeks, I can tell you it’s very, very good, and I’m certain it will get better as the settings for dual extrusion improve.

But go ahead and keep saying it’s not worth the money. It’s funny, really.

It’s like someone with a $70k sports care saying that it would be stupid for anyone to spend more than $70k on a car because it’s not worth it.

All you have to do is say, “It’s not worth it TO ME”, and then you’re fine.

No one can argue with that.

I’ve recommended printers to engineering and architecture offices and I can assure you that the price for the UM3 is perfectly acceptable. The people I spoke with are interested in a unit that will print objects easily, correctly and quickly so that they can make prototypes and models to show their customers. $1000 is nothing compared to lost man hours, wasted materials or most imporantly, missing deadlines or customer expectations.

I think the UM3 looks great and trust the people who have had hands on experience with it.

If you are comparing the UM3 to the Prusa i3 MK2, then you are doing apples vs oranges. They both are (most likely, I haven’t seen/used the i3 from Prusa) very nice and good machines. And they both work on very different segments of the market.

For example. it’s a kit vs a assembled, tested machine. I don’t know how long it takes to assemble & calibrate the Prusa i3 MK2. But lets say that is 8 hours (it took me 9 to assemble my first UMO, without calibration, so I think that is a fair estimate). Then, if you add salary of the engineer that needs to do that, you add 300 dollars on top of that with easy.
Dailing in your material settings? Add more hours. We provide and keep updating our material settings in Cura for this machine. And we will expand our range of materials soon.

If you just want to tinker/toy/play with 3D printing, this is NOT your machine. Buy an UMO, PrintrBot or maybe the i3 (as I said, I don’t have experience with it, so I don’t know how good it is)
If you want to have a machine at your office, chugging out prototypes for all kinds of objects without limiting the engineers. Then this is your machine.

Sorry but last one sound more as marketing than the reality. If you don’t want to limit engineers you miss few things:

  1. PVA absorb a lot of moisture from the air and you don’t offer sealed bay with dehydration that could give the ability to leave the PVA loaded in the printer for long period of time this will require a lot of effort for loading and unloading.

  2. I don’t see any chamber air cleaner or exhaust for printing advance plastics as Peek that stinks and will not be well accepted in office space.

  3. You don’t offer tempered chamber that could keep the air chamber in specific temperature range.

I really like UM products are they are well made and well designed and they are leader in home 3d printers or lets say it SOHO products. But let’s not joke with industry or professional machines.

  1. The PVA that we offer comes in sealed bags, and yes, has limited use. However, it is an improved form of PVA that is less moister absorbent in filament form. I don’t know the exact expected “out of bag” life time. But I’ll get back on that when I do know. I do know how they pulled off having the PVA in this form, but I’m pretty sure it’s a trade secret that I cannot share.

  2. We’re not offering PEEK or any high temperature material yet for that exact reason. People can experiment with it, but we’re not supporting it yet. You didn’t see me or anyone from Ultimaker mentioning PEEK. ABS printing we had tested, a room full of ABS printers had no noticeable toxic levels. The test with hairspray as bed adhesion, which happened at the same time by sheer luck, that was off the charts. We measure things instead of depending on hearsay these days.

  3. True, but, you do not specify why you need this. Our ABS doesn’t need this. Our Nylon doesn’t need it. And, (don’t quote me on this one yet), our first results with Poly-carbonate look very promising. We are not just approaching the problems from a machine perspective, also from a material perspective. There is so much untapped knowledge in chemistry. A simple door (as we offer for the UM2) also seem to help a lot.

(It’s a shame that I’m not allowed to show&tell what some of our customers are doing with the Ultimaker2+ already. As it would be easier to prove you wrong on the “industry” and “professional machines” with that)
(Also, I’m not marketing, I’m just a software engineer that has been with Ultimaker sinds the early days)

Sorry I didn’t want to offend you with SOHO and I am fully aware that with UM you can achieve remarkable results. Just industry is completely different story and I will give an example: You can built in-house server with SOHO components and you can achieve same level of performance as medium server grade system but you will hardly find someone to install and use the SAP on this. Just your statement that this is targeted for pro-engineering use is too much.

According to the PVA I really think that it is not that hard to create sealed spool compartment with silica for moisture control that will make the whole story much more easier. Swapping main material is okay but removing the support material every time and main material if nylon for example after every use is really not my favorite thing.

According to the chamber exhaust or air cleaner. Thrust me no one with normal working environment will allow any smell within the office space no matter if it hazard level or not. This will lead to discomfort or at least in my office will never be tolerated.

According to the materials, if you really want to target the industry you should know that engineering and advance plastics are the way to go everything rest is just beautiful piece of plastics. Materials like Nylon,PC,PEEK and IGUS Igludur are offering superior advantage in different areas opening 3D printing not only for creating nice toys and cosmetic details but really structure, moving and self-lubricating parts that actually can be built within device.

I still don’t know what SOHO is. But we have a prototype “drybox”. It’s not as easy as you sketch it.

Strange that you mention Nylon and PC, just like I did…

SOHO is Small Office/Home Office.

Sorry I mention Nylon and PC but “OUR”. I can print PC certain brand on almost every printer with heated bed and hot-end supporting 270C but this also got downsides like 112C Glass transition where the normal PC could sustain up to 140C. Basically this limit the number of the materials so thermally stabilized chamber will increase the range of the mats and will increase the quality even with your mats when we speak for Industry grade equipment.

@Pieter_Koorts If it’s like their UM2 line, the frame is mostly an aluminum skinned polyethylene (popularly known as Dibond, but that’s also a specific brand). It turns out to be a really good material for a machine frame. The left and right panels might be acrylic but it still seems to be well-engineered for the job.

@Jeff_DeMaagd yeah my bad. Just looked like acrylic, but hey, never afraid to be wrong.