Comparison of 5 different 3D printers

*Puts personal opinion hat on*

Being that I have tested a lot of printers in the last two years, I have come to the pessimistic mindset that every printer is low quality until proven otherwise regardless of what the company says. When we received the Cel-Robox, a machine touted a resolution of 20 microns possible, we were less than impressed by the quality of its prints and construction. The build plate was horrible to remove and did not fit the heating block right, and as a kicker a fan running air on the motherboard shorted out and was at full blast 24/7 within the first 5 hours of printing. I could hear the machine from down the hall, and this thing is a small machine. Eventually the motherboard died and that was the end of that story. 

Another example is the Zim by Zeepro, This printer was one of the most difficult printers I had the displeasure of operating for the simple fact I could not get it to work right. Their software and printer are only accessible through Wifi and internet for starters, and lets just say our internet in the office is slow so response time was even slower (as in if I have a failure it would take 6+ minutes to tell it to stop, I just began turning off the machine at that point). This machine was a huge success on Kickstarter and their marketing was great, the mechanics of the printer and the software is where everything fell short for a what was then $1500 printer, kinda where everything is important. I can go into detail for hours on the problems this machine had but I will save you the reading time. 

*Opinion hat is set down*

My point is, is that almost every printer company is going to say they are better then the next and in most cases it is not even close to the truth, and now that the Zortrax is a commonly accepted measuring stick you know the Zortrax has done what it claimed it would.

-Michael

*Puts personal opinion hat on*

Being that I have tested a lot of printers in the last two years, I have come to the pessimistic mindset that every printer is low quality until proven otherwise regardless of what the company says. When we received the Cel-Robox, a machine touted a resolution of 20 microns possible, we were less than impressed by the quality of its prints and construction. The build plate was horrible to remove and did not fit the heating block right, and as a kicker a fan running air on the motherboard shorted out and was at full blast 24/7 within the first 5 hours of printing. I could hear the machine from down the hall, and this thing is a small machine. Eventually the motherboard died and that was the end of that story. 

Another example is the Zim by Zeepro, This printer was one of the most difficult printers I had the displeasure of operating for the simple fact I could not get it to work right. Their software and printer are only accessible through Wifi and internet for starters, and lets just say our internet in the office is slow so response time was even slower (as in if I have a failure it would take 6+ minutes to tell it to stop, I just began turning off the machine at that point). This machine was a huge success on Kickstarter and their marketing was great, the mechanics of the printer and the software is where everything fell short for a what was then $1500 printer, kinda where everything is important. I can go into detail for hours on the problems this machine had but I will save you the reading time. 

*Opinion hat is set down*

My point is, is that almost every printer company is going to say they are better then the next and in most cases it is not even close to the truth, and now that the Zortrax is a commonly accepted measuring stick you know the Zortrax has done what it claimed it would.

-Michael

Michael,

Couldn't agree more. The hyperbole touted by many manufacturers is exactly that. I've been disappointed time and time again when trying new machines. I have one here now that is an Hbot design, wifi, touchscreen, linear guides, atmel processor and it looks sexy as hell. But they used cheap rails and poor design. The result ? currently it is the worst printing machine I have ever owned/used. And it looked so good on paper.....

The only thing that counts for me are high res close up pics of actual prints. If a new printer company doesn’t show them off proudly then I don’t even bother.

Carbon3D is a same story like BotObjects :) Many nice movies and descriptions, but the true is that they copied Form1 for 41M$ in 2 years :) I don't believe in the fairy tale about the fact that they increased print speeds of 25-100x

As venosa just posted on shoutbox, here's a video of it in action: http://www.ted.com/talks/joe_desimone_what_if_3d_printing_was_25x_faster#t-412628

What do you think now?  :lol: