I am living in an apartment with four electrical engineering students, two of whom are relatively enthusiastic about 3d printing (one works for an up and coming 3d printing company). We are discussing buying a 3d printer for our apartment but have found a lot of inner controversy over which level printer is most fitting for us. With a price cap of ~$1400 (from a budget that is anything but accurate), we have looked at a lot of options. Ultimately we have found ourself stuck between saving money (=bigger meals) by buying the Printrbot Simple Metal (possibly with the heated bed upgrade) or opening doors (=more options for prints) by buying the FlashForge Creator Pro.
TL;DR: Printrbot Simple Metal or the FlashForge Creator Pro
ā¦Help
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I have the printrbot simple makers (which is now discontinued but can be found on amazon) and printrbot is a great company, but if you are all elactrical engineers, I think you should build your own reprap model.
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Weād considered that option briefly and, although the logic isnāt totally sound, we decided that weād rather not have the 3d printer be the project and instead wanted the 3d printer to accelerate our other projects. With that said, do you have a recommendation for a comprable reprap?
kr0sh1
4
I donāt know anything about the Flashforge so I wouldnāt be a balanced opinion, but I have a heavily modified Printrbot Metal Plus and itās been fantastic. As both systems (the Simple and the Plus) use an inductive sensor to level the bed they are capable of auto-levelling and saving you a lot of time on faffing around with a screw-mounted print bed, and if tuned correctly you can get 100 micron prints out of them easily.
Iām with ctrlaltdel though - Iām a Robotics student, and if Iād pulled my finger out building one from scratch wouldāve been a walk in the park. If thereās four of you and one of you knows your way around a CAD program you could make something very advanced without having to put up with any āquirksā (design flaws).
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As the other enthusiastic roommate and as somebody who has built a 3d printer before Iām inclined to stay away from build-your-own designs. The printer I built (about 4 years ago) was a RepRap Rapman printer and we had a lot of problems with it. After assembling it we were constantly fiddling with belt tightness, fixing extruder feed and head clogs, and dealing with bed level issues. Donāt even get me started on trying to print ABSā¦ Custom lexan enclosures and electric blankets were involvedā¦ Granted, that was a while ago and who knows - we could have built it poorlyā¦
That experience really highlights to me how I want this printer to not work. I think nherbert stated it perfectly - āweād rather not have the 3d printer be the project and instead wanted the 3d printer to accelerate our other projects.ā With that in mind, it would be helpful to get some perspective on the Flashforge Creater Pro vs. Printrbot Simple Metal debate with regards to reliability and versatility (ie: can we get good ABS prints out of it?).
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The FlashForge will do a little bit more right out of the box but the PrintrBot might be a better printer in terms of quality and moddability. Both, Iām sure, will have plenty of weird quirks.
I have a Simple Metal, Iāve been printing with it pretty much every day for the past few months and havenāt had so much as an extruder clog. The bed is warped, but I was able to shim up a couple corners of the bed to make it more level. Once you have a fairly level bed, having the auto leveling feature on the Printrbot is great. Iāve spent a lot of time with Makerbot Replicator 2/2x/5th gen and the Printrbot has been a lot less effort to manage overall.
Both printers will be a project if you want to get the best prints possible. The Printrbot needs a few modifications the print abs, plus you might want to upgrade to the metal hot end if you want to print exotic materials, and youāll probably want to build an enclosure for it. Iāve never used a Flashforge but it looks like an improved 2X clone, which should probably be fine if sometimes frustrating.
In my mind, the bottom line is that the Printrbot can do almost as much as the other printer for half the cost.
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You will still fiddle with tightness and levelness but for price to performance the printrbot is the better choice, I am close to taking my simple makers from a 4 cubic inch build space to a 10 cubic inch space with no loss on quality and only about $40 dollars on materials
Thanks for all the input. It looks like weāre leaning towards getting the Printrbot Simple Metal after all the support its gotten. Weāre considering waiting on the heated bed, although we were looking forward to printing with both PLA and ABS.
Another person without an unbiased view of thingsā¦ but I have just assembled my first reprap (Prusa i3) and although I agree that the printer shouldnāt become the project, I do feel that in building my own printer I have learnt a lot about 3D printers (I am a product design engineer and have used 3D printers of varying types for years). I feel because of this learned knowledge through building my own printer I have more control over the parameters that effect print quality and over time will be able to make modifications to further improve print quality and print speed. That being said, if you really arenāt interested in all that, then reprapās probably arenāt for you. Worth considering though (especially if moneyās tight).
Very simple, donāt buy either. Believe me, you want a Rigidbot. For $1400 you could get a 12x16x10 inch build volume, a super accurate printer (people run theirs at 80mm/s, thatās faster than I run my Makerbot Replicator 2), with a heated build plate, dual extruders, and a bunch of filament. If you want to save as much money as possible, the slightly smaller Rigidbot kit is 10x10x10 with a heated build plate, and only costs $580 if you build the kit yourself (which wouldnāt be a problem for you four) Iām currently saving up for a Rigidbot myself, and would definitely reccomend it.
kr0sh1
11
Oh, and if you go ahead with the Printrbot, do yourself a massive favour and switch out the hot-end for an E3D - I destroyed one of their Ubis hot-ends in about three months and didnāt fancy waiting for Godo when it came to buying another Ubis. The E3Ds are fully repairable, modifiable and highly reliable, whilst giving you the option of swapping out the thermistor for a thermocouple if you want to print Polycarbonate or PEEK.
Current Completed Printrbot Mods:
- Installed drag chain on bed cabling
- Swapped heated bed heater for a silicone heater pad
- Upgraded to twin e3D extruders
- Flashed custom firmware.
Any questions about any of that stuff just drop me a line.
If you donāt mind me asking, how did you destroy it? Iām kind of worried about leaving my running for overnight prints. Iām worried the kind of print failure where a giant glob accumulates and are easy to deal with on something like a Rep2 would completely destroy the Printrbot.
My first printer and the only one I have right now is a Printrbot Simple Makers kit. I upgraded it to almost 8x8x8inches, with a heated build plate, doubled the accuracy, and a bunch of other improvements, but that cost me $700, and is still inferior to a rigidbotā¦
thereās flash forge cloneās on amazon for as low as $799 for dual extrusion and a variety to choose from. Another thing to think about is the cost of material and replacement parts. Being that thereās four of you on the machine something could go wrong where youāll need to replace a part. Happy bot shopping!
I looked into the rigidbot a little. I think we wanted to work with a slightly more established printer. I get the feeling the rigidbot has a lot of potential, but also has a lot of kinks that need working out compared to the printrbot and doesnāt have the same level of support. Does this sound accurate?
Not in my opinion. The quality of prints from a Printrbot is exponentially worse than a Rigidbot, Iāve printed on my printrbot before upgrades, it was really poor quality. The Rigidbot has very few kinks that Iāve heard of. I talk on instagram with a maker who owns a rigidbot, and then got hired by them. His prints are exceptional, way better than I get on my printrbot, even after I doubled its precision. The Simple Metal isnāt a bad printer, but itās just mediocre. I believe rigidbot is really a much better printer and Im a printrbot user through and through, and have no connection to either company lol. Rigidbot is a small company, but it also means they can give much more personal support. Iāve contacted printrbot a bunch of times, and they basically just refer you to forums and send you on your way
Printrbot āSupportā is the community.
Hey Nicholas,
Thereās nothing at all wrong with the Flashforge that a few tiny 3D printed mods wonāt correct. Itās great, sturdy machine and very reliable. Mine prints all day long at 100uM and 200uM on glass. Invest in Simplify3D at the same time and youāll have years of happy printing on a bomb-proof box. Support from local resellers and Amazon is exceptionally good too!
Cheers,
AndyL
Pot8oSH3D
Rigidbot looks very interesting and reading about makes me want it to be all that it says it is. However in this case I canāt find a lot of reviews for or first hand experiences with the Rigidbot, and the ones I have appear mixed. From the sample of experiences I could find online it seems like the people who enjoy the Rigidbot the most are the ones who almost immediately upgraded a wide range if components. It seems to me that it has a lot of potential for a real enthusiast (and a frugal one at that), but might not be ideal for us. I have talked to quite a few of my coworkers and no one has heard much about Rigidbot first hand, whereas many of them say the Printrbot Simple is one of the best value printers available. I may regret the decision, but itās hard to spend the money on a Rigidbot considering it hasnāt yet established itself.
Do you think the Flashforge is too much for a first printer? (we have printing experience, however no one has owned a 3d printer before)
As one of the few people here with Flashforge experience Iām interested why you would choose it over other printers.
