I'm looking at getting another 3D printer.

I’m looking at getting another 3D printer. Which currently available machine (up to $2500) is the most turnkey? I don’t have time to assemble or tinker with the machine to get it to start outputting good prints. (Tinkering to refine the quality, yes, but to get reliably accurate output, no). Any thoughts?

Ultimaker all the way. Just had the pleasure of assembling one this week, and if you get the preassembled one and its output is as good as what this machine got, you’ll be ecstatic. You’ll get it, and not even need to tinker to refine the quality.

Or the felix printer…very delicate in printing and also easy to assemble. And with love we assemble test before get him to you…

The UP! Is what I’d recommend, it just works. Also helps that it’s still the only printer to do single material support right.

The UP! is probably the one if you want click to print capability. As @Anderson_Ta points out, the smart support feature is much better than the equivalent open source software variants. Saying that, Ultimaker has a reputation for awesome build quality and highest print speed. The UP! also has a pretty small build volume if that’s a factor.

@ThantiK Thats a pretty resounding endorsement. Been thinking of going that route for the students at the University. I’m a bit of a sceptic though when it comes to a desktop 3D printer that doesn’t need any tinkering…

@Tim_Rastall you should really check out the new version of Cura for the Ultimaker. Load file, print. That’s pretty much all there is. Even slicing is done on the fly while placing parts. @Daid_Braam has done some amazing work lately.

And @Brian_Evans , I was honestly impressed too. I didn’t help with the build. But the two completely inexperienced guys that built this thing had very little knowledge beforehand. Short of some connection issues due to Ubuntu permissions, once they had cura up and running, they loaded the robot model, hit print…and the thing came out perfect the very first print.

@ThantiK So they built it as a kit and had no problems? Impressive! What about noise? Ive never been around an Ultimaker but every plywood box bot I’ve had is loud.

@Brian_Evans , It’s not loud. It’s not as quiet as some of the machines I’ve had experience with though. The Lulzbot AO-101 when our lab got it was nearly silent. For a wood box though (considering it’s basically a resonance chamber) it’s pretty damn quiet. I remember one really funky part was aligning the cross rods, and they have you use some stupid oval piece, on the inside of a rounded corner, with no surefire angle alignment…just a recipe for inaccuracy. But that’s with the kit, not so much with the pre-built.

See here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ultimaker/5487826461/

That… That is fucking stupid.

@ThantiK Weird, what calipers too damn hard to use or something?

@ThantiK As soon as I’ve put my hot end back together I’m going to have a crack at the new Cura, looks pretty impressive. The point I was making (badly) was that because the UP! software is only configured for the UP! and it’s not really user adjustable, they have dialed in the extrusion, temp, speed and layer height settings to the extent that it is so much better at supports than I have ever achieved with Slic3r/Cura/Kisslicer (despite much methodical tweeking). I guess there is no reason they couldn’t do the same thing with Cura and a vanilla Ultimaker, perhaps they have already.
The other thing worth mentioning about the UP! is that it uses rack and pinion instead of belts, I’m sure this comes with it’s own challenges but I’d imagine it is less prone to require user servicing than a belt driven bot… Incidentally, this isn’t a sales pitch, I’d go Ultimaker over UP! any day, but I WANT to be able to tweek and augment. Also, moving a print along the horizontal plane is less that optimal IMO.

I don’t have experience to offer, but in case you aren’t aware of these comparison sites:
http://www.additive3d.com/3dpr_cht.htm
http://www.additive3d.com/comp_lks.htm
http://www.3ders.org/pricecompare/3dprinters/
https://www.makershed.com/Articles.asp?ID=300

Not sure the Up is the best idea and last I checked they still used belts with ball bearing slides. Saw their booth at Inside 3D in NYC and nothing was working on any of their machines. At least Daid who develops cura works for ultimaker so you get the benefits of an open system with better integration. I agree with @ThantiK on the Ultimaker - for that price point its the best chance you have at a quality machine. Everything else makes some terrible compromises as we both know with the Printrbot.

@Brian_Evans . As above, in the interests of providing correct information, the UP! uses rack and pinions not belts. The first 3d printer I used was a brand new UP! plus and it worked perfectly out of the box, had great supports and the print quality was excellent. After a year of tweeking my self sourced mendelmax I can just about match the quality, still can’t get snap away supports as good as the UP!

I made this a while ago: “Comparison Chart of Affordable Desktop 3D Printers” http://forum.3ders.org/showthread.php?tid=186

@Tim_Rastall Saying the same thing over and over does not make it true. Show me a photo and I would love to see it. Here’s mine:

Looks like a belt and slide to me.although that photo is a couple years old so when did it change?

@Brian_Evans that looks like an original UP! not the plus version that I used. I recall noticing the rack/pinion on the x axis so maybe it uses both. In saying that, I can’t find a picture and I’d have to go visit someone to confirm so I’ll retract previous statements until I can prove otherwise :frowning: