Looking to purchase a printer for a prototyping shop. Looking for a “Just hit print” setup in the $2000 range. Had been considerining the Up Plus 2, but I am intrigued by the Felix 3.0. Does anyone have experience with Felix printers they could share?
No Felix experience but I’ve been looking at the Zortrax m200, sounds like it would suit your needs and the prints I’ve seen are as good as or better than the UP! http://zortrax.com I see Dell just bought 5000 of these, so they’ve clearly got something right.
For that range I’d recommend the Ultimaker 2 but no printer in the hobby price range <10000 will actually be “Just hit print”.
Thank you for the suggestions. I should have stated that $2000 was the top of our budget so the Ultimaker 2 is a bit much. For the money the m200 looks like a strong contender. Brigham, I wish you the best in starting your business, but at this time we do not have a need for your super awesome build volume. I look forward to your new YouTube channel though.
It’s €1,895.00 . What’s the current conversion rate for USD?
1895 EUR is about 2600 USD, and that is before shipping or filament costs. With our fixed development budget at this time we can’t justify the extra cost. Don’t get me wrong though, if I had more cash on hand, the Ultimaker 2 would be my printer of choice.
I have to say that for all my Ultimaker Love, the closed source Zortrax is looking like a better software/printer package. Mechanically, I suspect there won’t be much in it by their software tool chain and, in particular, the snap away support generation feature (that I think is critical) still lags behind the closed source equivalents. Daid got a bit growly when I Pointed out that the #1 want on the slicer wish list (from this community) was better support structures. I think the Ultimaker folk need to do some more focussed market research to find out where the holes are in their offerings vs the competition.
@David_Da_Costa has one of the Kickstarter Zortrax machines and posted some very nice lookign prints a week or so ago.
I am extremely pleased with the Zortrax m200 and the Zortrax team. The quality of the prints is astounding for an FDM printer and surpasses the UP Plus 2.
David, you may have just locked in our decision. We are just checking at this point whether or not they provide a educational discount. Because I am a university student, Makerbot has offered a 5% discount on the printer and 10% off on filament.
I don’t think they provide an educational discount, they are based in Poland, but please ask them. There filament is very good and for owners quite cheap. $19 plus shipping which works out to around $28 a reel and ships from China in a couple of days.
That is a pretty amazing deal on filament given the typical $40 - $50 price point found through other manufacturers websites. I will be sure to report back with the response from Zortrax regarding the educational discount.
We tested our the Felix 3.0 printer at work a few weeks ago and I have to say, it’s a great, rugged printer and looks awesome too. Haven’t tried the others though.
Neither Zortrax or Ultimaker are offering educational discounts at this time.
m200 ordered! Looking forward to posting some prints for the group. Thanks for all the feedback.
Awesome! Looking forward to hearing about your experience.
I know it has been a while, but our Zortrax M200 has just arrived and is currently printing the Make Torture Test. Pictures to come. In the meantime here is a link to the very first print which was the Zortrax Panther at 200 micron layer height.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0NUNGgSAM4XNnU1SHUzbmNDc2lJWW5DR3NYeVFVcDQtWHc4/edit?usp=sharing
Make Torture Test results:
https://plus.google.com/106404991577920977171/posts/gQddvoPxwqe
Cool! so are you happy? It looks good allthough it might be over extruding very slightly btloi.
You should try Louise’s dragon
We are happy so far. Although it has only been about 10 hours. The z-axis lead screw is bowed fairly noticeably, and I am wondering if that is the source of some of the banding present on the taller features of the Torture Test. We have reached out to Zortrax for guidance on repair/replacement. In person the prints are comparable to the commercial Stratasys Dimension I use at work. The only other issue is the software. It is very easy to use, but many of the advanced features advertised are not yet available. Only two resolutions can be used 140 and 190 micron, and there is no control for print bed temp or extruder temp. Hopefully these are coming in future releases.
While Louise’s dragon does look cool I am actually working on a CT reconstruction of an alligator head that I would like to print next. Then it will be back to work.