Help please!
Is it worth buying this Wanhao Duplicator 4 in good working condition for $300? If not what would be a fair but great price to ask? I have a printrbot simple metal that I’m not happy with seeing as it doesn’t have a heated bed. I’m fairly new to 3d Printing so I’m not looking to spend a lot.
If it’s functional it’s a good deal.
If it’s stock that might be a little steep, but not bad. Prices have come down a lot since that came out. The full enclosure is worth something but not a ton on a plexiglas frame printer.
Basically you have to compare it to a new Ender3 or CR-10 or whatever that’s not enclosed but probably a better printer in some ways.
Is the frame rigid? I’ve heard the D4 and older Wanhaos were pretty shaky. Personally, I prefer a non-sliding bed but I don’t know if I’d want this, but I’d have to see how it is in person first. I don’t know the other limitations of this model but I’m wary of what looks like an acrylic frame.
@Jeff_DeMaagd the full frame (torsion box) makes it more rigid than you might think. The plastic Z stage cantilever arms and 8mm X rods are the bigger issues.
Thank you all for the comments! Any suggestion on a counter offer that would keep this completely low risk? I’m pretty sure he’d go down in price somewhat.
You can buy a new ENDER 3 or GEEETECH A10 for under $200, so I’d counter with $150 or less. Like the others said, prices have dropped a lot in the last year or two.
If it’s totally stock, maybe 150. The Sailfish Mightyboard controller is end of life. It’s fine and works pretty well, but no developers working on it anymore. You’re stuck in the x3g slicing ecosystem (a post-processed binary form of gcode) so it’s a little more hassle to slice files to print, and will be forever unless you do a board swap someday, which is doable but not a trivial amount of effort.
@Kyle_Taylor Depending on what you want, it’s apples and oranges, I’d compare it against another non-bedflinger.
@Jeff_DeMaagd I’d take a well-built bedflinger over plastic cantilever bed arms. I think the D4 pre-dated all the Rep1 clones switching over to metal Z arms. That’s something that should factor into the price, it’s a much better printer if it has metal/reinforced Z arms. I would plan on doing the upgrade if it doesn’t have that yet.
I have one made by ctc exact clone of this one running sailfish on it with dual extrusion, it depends what you expect from it, but if I were to buy a bprinter now I would invest into prusa, and if you have skills you can buy a kit and assemble it yourself. I am using prusa at work and it is faster and more accurate than this chinese clone of makerbot you are showing, plus prusa is super quiet and really more advanced than this, only problem is you will have to build a cage from two ikea tables if you want to make acheat chamber for big abs parts. I presonally would advise on prusa, I am having a lot of issues with my home printer (ctc) clone of makerbot aswell practically the same like the one you are showing, its not going to be easy for you if you are a begginer and a lot of parts do not exist for it anymore. the most annoying in the machine you are showing will e bed leveling, its set on springs with little screws , and the table Z axis will wobble becase its not decoupled, plus this printer is made of cheap wood, so if you drop it may crack or went way out of alignment etc… prusa is made of metal… I would advise to buy more studry machine than this crap you are looking at. and I can say that because I have one and I can prove it 
The CTC clones were utter garbage. They took the FlashForge copy of the Makerbot Replicator 1, and made it cheaper and crappier. Knock-offs of clones. Lots of CTCs ended up with fried boards and a few I’m aware of caught on fire. Just terrible quality in the wiring.
Wanhao and Flashforge printers from that era were pretty ok. FlashForge actually improved a lot on the Replicator 1 over years of product revisions, and the FF Creator Pro line was one of the best printers you could get for under $1000 for a while. Things have changed a lot since then…