3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

I enjoyed this article, but perhaps not for the reasons the author hoped. This quote, <i>&quot;With some tweaks to my G code and use of a nozzle that is more suited for higher resolution prints I am confident that I could produce a part that would be very close to the quality of the Stratasys produced part.&quot;</i> really summed it up. It sums to &quot;I can tweak my setup and get this part to be good enough relative to the expensive machine.&quot; and that is great. What is missing is it is <i>every friggin&#x27; part</i>. Seriously, all of the $2,000 printers have quirks that hit based on part geometry, especially in ABS. Part too long? need to add hold down tabs to prevent warping. Too many overhangs? extra supports. Too long a tool travel? Up the hotend temperature so that the extruded material doesn&#x27;t cool down to much.<p>You can make great parts but every machine is different, and every part you make has a slightly different requirements. &quot;Real&quot; manufacturing tools are all about the repeatability and setup. Pretty much any machining center can take a gcode file, look at it, and adjust itself to make the best possible rendition, or warn you if it can&#x27;t do so and meet its advertised tolerances. A hobby machine you print it, you tweak the parameters, you print it again, maybe you tweak the gcode a bit, and finally you print a really nice part.<p>What gets you repeatability? measuring. There are so many things that you can measure and hobby machines don&#x27;t. Who puts glass slides (accurate to a tenth of a micron) providing position feedback on the x, y, and z stages on a hobby machine? Nobody, the slides and readers cost $1K just by themselves. There has been some motion toward monitoring the feed of the filament to give a &quot;stripped filament&quot; warning, but who measures the actual flow? the temperature of the melt chamber and feed path?<p>I really enjoy my 3D printer, I&#x27;m printing out a damper for a meat smoker as I write this, its going to be glorious, but its also the 3rd time I&#x27;ve printed this particular part to tune it up. We&#x27;ll see how it works on the smoker.

&quot;The Stratasys printed part was printed with ABS material, 100% infill with a standard layer height on normal detail settings. Not having direct access to the machine I was not able to extract any real nitty gritty details on the overall print set up. For the Lulzbot print that I created I used HIPS material with a 0.5mm nozzle, 0.1mm layer height, 25% infill, 4 top and bottom solid layers, 45 mm&#x2F;s print speed with standard acceleration, 240C extrusion temperature, 110C bed temperature, and an extrusion width of 0.6mm.&quot;<p>This is an apple to oranges comparison. I work with a Lulzbot 5, a Lulzbot Mini, a Stratasys dimension elite, and two polyprinters on a daily basis and have been working with 3D printers for over 10 years as part of my job. Why was a material like HIPS ever used for comparison with ABS if both machines can print with ABS? Why was the extrusion width 0.6mm on a 0.5mm nozzle? Why is he comparing a 100% fill print with a 25% fill print? Why didn&#x27;t he mention that the Lulzbot Taz 5 he was using has a $500 print head upgrade to let it print soluble support material as well? This whole article just reeks of either someone who is either very new and inexperienced to Hobby 3D printers or was intentionally trying to make the TAZ 5 look bad. I have done similar comparison studies myself and have come to drastically different conclusions. We sold the dimension elite a while ago.

From the article: <i>&quot;One defect I observed on the Lulzbot printed part was the blade portion of the tool had a split in it from not bonding correctly. This was most likely a cause of pushing the 0.5mm nozzle to its limits in terms of layer height but a little glue and some pressure would fix this split no problem.&quot;</i><p>Er, that&#x27;s called a &quot;reject&quot; in manufacturing.<p>This is the basic problem with low-end filament-type 3D printers - weak layer bonding. You&#x27;re welding a hot thing to a cold thing, which never works well. And there&#x27;s considerable thermal expansion, and thus shrinkage, in the material, which produces internal stresses between layers. That&#x27;s where things crack.

This is an unfair comparison.. Having used a Stratasys Objet of around a similar price point, the amount of detail you can get is incredible -- down to fractions of a millimeter.<p>Sure, for the prints that were pictured in the comparison, either can do relatively well, but the point of higher end printers is for higher resolution prints, different materials, shapes of the print, etc. To ignore all of those use cases and focus on a generic print that a hobbyist would make, of course a hobbyist printer would suffice!

No mention at all of the strength&#x2F;rigidity&#x2F;hardness of the jigs. The professionally printed one was made from ABS, which is a harder plastic than HIPS. It is also possible that the professional machine bonds the plastic filament to the workpiece better. The best way to test this would be destructively.<p>Of course, if the jig is just going to be used for a short period of time, structural integrity doesn&#x27;t matter. And the hobbyist machines are just going to get better as technology improves.

Hi, I wrote the article. I am really enjoying the comments everyone has contributed. One major detail I left out was the amount of failed parts that came out of the professional machine prior to getting a good one. I was unaware of the reject rate at the time I wrote this. In addition, the production tool ended up having resin added and then sanded to cover up some of the imperfections on the &quot;professional&quot; print.

A few years ago in grad school I spent about a month designing a 3D printed case for a Raspberry Pi + Camera [0]. We used a Makergear M2 (a $2000 printer at the time).<p>The process had some frustrating moments, but overall it was an amazing experience. 3D printers allow for a wonderful iterative design process. Come in in the morning, pull parts off of the printer, measure, test fit, etc. Tweak in CAD, or start working on the next part, and start printing your changes&#x2F;additions before lunch. By mid afternoon the print is done, and you usually have time to do another round of changes that you can start printing before you leave for the day.<p>Of course, this is all assuming that your printer is working continuously and that you&#x27;re ok tossing a lot of filament from those test prints. My experience with the M2 was that typically I could get it dialed in and it would print great for 2-3 weeks before it started misbehaving. Sometimes it was a simple adjustment (re-level the bed, etc.), but most of the time there was no obvious indication of the problem, and I&#x27;d spend several frustrating days leveling, calibrating, cleaning, and generally tinkering until it started working consistently once again.<p>There are also plenty of issues with the print quality and precision, but I&#x27;ve already written more than I intended, so I&#x27;ll skip them. Needless to say, it was sufficient for our needs. IIRC, our final cost per case was $4 in material (PLA) with a print time of about 6 hours.<p>It&#x27;s a fascinating technology, and it&#x27;s mind blowing how far it&#x27;s come in the last decade. I&#x27;m not sure that the FFF&#x2F;FDM style printers will ever get to the point where they&#x27;re ready for use by the general public, but the overall technology is here to stay. I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised to see 3D printers become as common as microwaves in my lifetime.<p>[0]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;JkF1WQ4.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;JkF1WQ4.jpg</a>

I have never seen a 3D printer, although I have seen a model (of a house plan) made with a 3D printer. You folks who live near civilization and &#x27;make&#x27; communities are so lucky! :)<p>Are there any 3D printers that integrate a milling machine?<p>I imagine a machine that prints the model slightly oversize, milling and then perhaps finally warming the surface to polish it, all as it goes...<p>I would love to have access to a hobby 3D printer as I have this idea that won&#x27;t die about making a cylindrical version of the Enigma <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.franklinheath.co.uk&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Enigma&#x2F;Paper_Enigma" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.franklinheath.co.uk&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;Enigma&#x2F;Paper_Enigm...</a> with glowire or alternatively tracks for ball bearings, as a cheap present people can buy at, say, Bletchley Park gift shop. Silly thing to get fixated on.

If his conclusion were true companies like Shapeways would only use cheap hobby printers. But ofcourse it is not.<p>Reliability, support, accuracy, all lacking with hobby printers.

The professional printer printed out almost 4x the amount of material in the same time (100% infill vs 25%). If it had the same settings for hollow infill, it likely would have been much, much faster.

What a weird article!<p>The low-cost part is as good as the high-cost part ... except in all of these ways that it&#x27;s not, that I will outline here. Oh, and I basically just eyeballed them, instead of measuring them. Oh, when pieces were missing due to failure to print, I just kind of assume that they would have printed okay with some tweaks.<p>What!? Amusing.

Here&#x27;s another interesting comparison: $20,000 vs $600: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hanselman.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;3DPrinterShootout600PrintrbotVs20000UPrintSEPlus.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hanselman.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;3DPrinterShootout600PrintrbotV...</a>

I read this whole article hoping to find the part where he tests the tensile strength, impact resistance, stiffness, and dimensional accuracy of the two parts. It never came. Except for the part where he had a delamination (&quot;split&quot;), which I guess means zero strength for that part of the part.<p>I&#x27;ve been fairly disappointed with the strength of Prusa-Mendel-printed parts I&#x27;ve made. Even if you don&#x27;t have complete delaminations, it&#x27;s easy to get poor layer adhesion, which makes the parts fall apart under the least strain. You can fight that by turning up the temperature and filament feed rate, at the cost of dimensional accuracy (which you can compensate for in theory but I haven&#x27;t done so successfully, being just an amateur) but the higher heat also weakens the PLA. Maybe this weakening is hydrolysis due to water absorption in the filament; I don&#x27;t have a way to measure that, except printing the same thing a second time after dehydrating the filament, which I haven&#x27;t done.<p>I was surprised to find that 100% infill is not always the strongest option, even holding part geometry constant. Lower infill settings produce a more compliant part, and it can consequently withstand higher impact energies.<p>I don&#x27;t think you should hold part geometry constant when changing machines or especially entire fabrication technologies. You should play to the strengths of the machine you have. I know that&#x27;s contrary to the outlook of 3D printing, but it&#x27;s true. Things like topology optimization can easily generate forms that are impossible to injection-mold, relatively easy to FDM, and much stronger. If you have the option of 25% infill, you can probably get a stronger part by deploying the plastic you saved as ribs outside the main body. And so on.

It would have been nicer to have seen a comparison using the same material as well as a series of parts designed to test for specific issues in 3D printing.<p>Add to this printing 100 copies of each part and we might have ended up with a useful set of data points.

3D printing, especially hobbyist machines, is still in its infancy and produces disappointing results. A large flat piece warps. The resolution is coarse. It takes too long to produce even a simple piece. The machine needs constant monitoring. It&#x27;s at the equivalent of the DOS stage of personal computing.<p>I wrote code to produce STL files. These files are accepted by hobbyist printers. I sent it to a professional shop, they complained one of my triangles wasn&#x27;t closed, couldn&#x27;t fix it or tell me which it was. Wonderful.

Neat project comparing FDM.<p>Now, let&#x27;s be a little more fair and start looking at what production companies will be buying:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www8.hp.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;printers&#x2F;3d-printers.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www8.hp.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;printers&#x2F;3d-printers.html</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stratasys.com&#x2F;3d-printers&#x2F;production-series" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stratasys.com&#x2F;3d-printers&#x2F;production-series</a><p>No contest. Having multiple hundreds of thousands of colors, properties (like heat-resistance, flexibility, different opacity), various different materials, automated easily removable supports, decent precision, and serious speed beats the shit out of your desktop model any day of the week. Sorry.

The difference between food at a good restaurant and a great restaurant isn&#x27;t huge.<p>The price however usually is.

I&#x27;d like to see a similar post ten years from now, see how things have evolved. I didn&#x27;t realise how precise some of these industrial 3D printers were! This gives me a lot of hope as to what I might have in my house in a decade.

What&#x27;s also important when comparing 3D printers is maintenance cost and effort. For example: The Ultimaker 2 we have in our Hackerspace needs regular replacement (about every 600 printing hours) of the PTFE Coupler (hot end part). Also sometimes you need to perform a cold pull (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ultimaker.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;resources&#x2F;19510-how-to-apply-atomic-method" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ultimaker.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;resources&#x2F;19510-how-to-apply-atomic...</a>) if the nozzle is clogged.

Surely the high gloss finish on the black material is drawing attention to a lot of the flaws as well? I&#x27;d really like to see a same colour comparison between the two.

I see cheap 3D printers like I saw linux in 1995: not quite the functional equivalent of a $100K SGI workstation, but still a great way to get experience in the area. You just have to understand that much of your time will be spent tuning the printer, and fixing it, and upgrading it. I don&#x27;t know that the Statasys fails nearly as often as a cheap printer.

3D Printing is really great for industrial designers who want to prototype products. My uncle is an industrial designer and I remember how costly it used to be for him to come up with a simple prototype. Today a $2500 printer can get one pretty far in a few hours, trully revolutionary. It gives a greater margin for experimentation, trial and error.

Using different material and different infill is a bit of an unfair comparison. Using 100% infill causes more problems with warping due to shrinkage, thus increasing the difficulty. Using 25% avoids this, but decreases stability a bit.<p>Regarding the print quality in general, I think an Ultimaker 2+ would give you better results (also at a price of 2500$).

Be aware that the high end printers include features that are patented, for example soluble support, heated build chambers, etc, all have IP around them that may prevent companies selling inexpensive printers from including those features directly. This could translate to better results from the high end printers.

&quot;The Stratasys machine uses a separate dissolvable support material that can be washed away with a special salt water solution.&quot;<p>This can be achieved with dual extruder models Makerbot 2X or its FlashForge clone, under $2500.<p>Use HIPS as the support material, print in ABS and dissolve HIPS in d-limonene.

3d printer testers should use a default model with complex geometry which makes comparison much easier. For instance,<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thingiverse.com&#x2F;thing:1019228" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thingiverse.com&#x2F;thing:1019228</a>

This seems like an interesting hobby. How much time is needed to achieve a reasonably high understanding of this work? Not industrial grade expert, but a knowledgeable layman. And where&#x2F;how can I educate myself?

Additive manufacturing is bad from the getgo. Anything with errors, adding upon with errors, is unsuitable for large scale precision manufacturing.

aren&#x27;t resin printers increments better than normal 3d printers?