
3D Printer Shootout – $600 Printrbot vs. $20,000 UPrint SE Plus - zdw
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/3DPrinterShootout600PrintrbotVs20000UPrintSEPlus.aspx
======
brudgers
Ok, I am compelled to point out that the $22,000 printer works ~8 times as
fast or does 8 times as much work...depending on how you look at it. Droplets
versus mugs.

    
    
        Maths
        (0.2mm/0.1mm)^3
    

There is not much of a premium for performance in supply costs. The premium in
hardware costs is ~4.5x. A lot for a consumer. Cheap if you're racing.

What I was reminded of is commodity servers. You run the models through a
cluster of three or four cheap rigs (maybe with different slicing software) to
increase the odds of getting a good artifact in 8 hours and to allow taking a
machine offline for tuning.

Of course eight 0.2mm resolution printers will no more create a 0.1mms
artifact than 9 fertile ladies will gestate an infant in one month.

~~~
Vendan
not completely true, as there are more variables at play. 0.1mm vs 0.2mm is
the layer height, but you are missing the extrusion width settings. For all
you know, the $22,000 was running twice the extrusion width. In addition, just
cause a printer was run at 0.2mm doesn't mean that's the smallest layer height
it can do, I would expect the printrbot metal to do at least 0.1mm, if not
better.

~~~
brudgers
The filiment could have been wider as you suggest. The filiment on the $600
printer could have been wider too.

My internet connection to the omniscience is down. I was just going with
what's described in the article.

There's a reason that the $22,000 model costs $22,000. Margin is only one of
them.

~~~
Vendan
Not the filament itself, the extrusion width. It's something that you specify
in the slicer, and can vary by a bit, between hard bounds specified by the
nozzle diameter of the print head. Also, consider how much of that $22,000 is
"make it look pretty". They are already trying to do everything they can to
make money off the thing, i.e. expensive filament and disposable build plates.

~~~
brudgers
If a part effectively takes a calendar day to print, the build plate increases
the odds of an acceptable prototype 0.1%, and net revenue on the completed
project will be $5001 per day, then a $5 build plate pays for itself in a
properly capitalized design development cycle.

And that's only the case if other features of the system don't add any value
that could offset the cost of the plate and the additional day of design labor
and overhead is ignored.

All of which is to propose the possibility that there might be business cases
where the machine makes sense and the possibility that everyone besides we two
obvious geniuses might not be incompetent.

------
ChuckMcM
I enjoyed reading this, as the author stated it is a rather contrived test,
there are things the Stratasys printer can print that the Printrbot cannot
(anything with complex overhangs and undercuts) but that really wasn't the
point I think. There is also the entire 'tools' thing where the tool is often
less important than the operator. I know people who can carve a bust out of
ice with a chainsaw, but I'd be lucky to make a square block with the very
same chainsaw and equivalent ice. The point being that tools are only as good
as the training of the operator so tool comparison really does need to expert
operators if it wants to be diagnostic.

But what it _does_ say, and I believe it is incontrovertible, is that the
"personal 3d printer" market is evolving at least as fast as the
"professional" 3d printer market and the overlap of capabilities is growing.
For any manufacturing technology its going to be speed, cost, finish, and
capability and while personal 3d printers have nailed it on cost, and they are
now competitive on speed, they are working on finish and capability. And that
suggests to me its a time thing, not a 'new science' thing between when 3D
printers start delivering on their potential.

I've got a Makerbot Replicator 1/Dual (the last of the 'opensource' Makerbots
and currently replicated by the Flashforge Creator 3D for half the price I
paid :-) which was much better than the original Makerbot 'cupcake' or the
early reprap machines. There are print heads (a combination of an extruder and
a hot end) now available which both improve the finish significantly and the
speed. So its really a fun place to be.

And my personal favorite is that its a way to exploit robotics hacking in a
much more practical way than running around a room avoiding walls :-).

------
nkvoll
It certainly raises some good questions, and the Printrbot is a great machine
at the price point (I have a Printrbot Simple RepRap clone myself). His looks
pretty well calibrated as I've seen a lot of Z-wobbling artefacts on the
prints from several Printrbot (Simple Makers, not necessarily the metal one).

Worth nothing is that things like the Z-scar being on the side of the cup
instead of under the handle is something that's decided by the slicer (the
software that translates the 3d model into printer commands).

Different open source slicers that are regularly used produce different
locations for these scars -- and I'm not sure if it's actually possible to
position/hint this Z-scar manually in any of them. They often do try to be
"smart" about it, but the end result may vary.

~~~
shanselman
Do you think I just got lucky with the Z-scar and Cura?

~~~
nkvoll
So I just took the coffee cup STL and loaded into the latest Cura myself,
rotated in 90 degrees so it was standing upright. Without changing anything
else, I ended up getting the layer changes on a few difference places over the
print (I'm seeing this just by analyzing the G-Code using
[http://gcode.ws](http://gcode.ws)), depending on the layer height. It starts
to the right of the handle and after a while seems to sort-of stabilize almost
on the opposite side of the handle and on the right side of the actual handle,
before the handle separates from the cup body.

All in all, it will likely have come out decent, but certainly not under the
handle as you have. This I guess is because Cura will start the new layer
close to where it finishes it's previous layer by default. In other words: it
depends on infill percent/pattern and model location on the build platform.

I figure this is because you've added support. This causes the print head to
get a "closest" start of the new layer exactly under the handle (because
that's where the support material are). So going as far as calling it "lucky",
no. The support placement actually helps Cura put the Z-scars in a good place
on this model. On another model, it might be the exact opposite.

(PS: I use Cura for all my slicing and I like it a lot -- but I don't feel
like the software actually gives me much control about the Z-scar placement)

~~~
shanselman
Fascinating. Thanks for this. I was thinking it was either the support or
running it through NetFabb first.

------
bluedino
We bought a Makerbot Replicator for $6,000 and it's been a huge disaster. I'm
not sure if the people who bought it didn't read the Amazon reviews or what.

We were having the local college print things for us for $150/pop. For double
what we paid we could have gotten a lightly used Stratasys which is the same
printer the college uses.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>We were having the local college print things for us for $150/pop.

Care to expand on this? I've been playing with the idea of buying a couple
very nice 3D printers and starting a 3D printing company. I think a lot of
people have been burned by the consumer-level printers or simply need bigger
or higher quality prints. What are you guys printing? Do you feel $150 is a
fair price? What is the turn around time? What materials? Does that include
delivery?

My gut feeling is a local company with local delivery and quick turn-around
could be more tempting that going with one of the web-based providers who take
days.

~~~
bradfa
There's already a few established companies in the "cloud" 3d printer market,
even 3D Systems (the 3d printer manufacturer) participates with their
Quickparts brand
([http://www.quickparts.com/LowVolumePrototypes.aspx](http://www.quickparts.com/LowVolumePrototypes.aspx)).
Just go get some quotes and see if you can make a business case doing this
type of thing better in some way.

Being cheaper isn't going to win you a ton of business, imho. Being faster or
better or more personal, or providing unique materials may win you quite a lot
of more niche business, though. For instance, for low volume injection
molding, Proto Labs are hard to beat as they will do a fully automated quote
and give you flow analysis for parts you upload within an hour or two (usually
this takes days). Your business would need to separate itself from the other
existing 3d printer providers in order to have good success.

------
thisjepisje
What's up with the abundance of cheap extrusion printers, while (almost) no
consumer-grade SLS (selective laser sintering) machines are available? The
latter technology seems vastly superior to me, in terms of freedom to actually
print anything you want. Is the technology that much harder?

~~~
jacquesm
Harder, much more expensive and much more dangerous to operate. So that's why
they're not more common. The last thing you want is for a machine like that to
be run in a regular home without proper fume extraction. At the back of those
machines you usually see a thing like a very thick vacuum hose connected to
remove the (toxic!) vapors.

They also consume a lot of power, usually requiring industrial power hookups.

edit: here is a nice picture of such a setup

[https://www.solidconcepts.com/content/images/repeatable-
proc...](https://www.solidconcepts.com/content/images/repeatable-process-
control-001.jpg)

Those white tubes going up out of the machine are the extraction channels.

~~~
yourapostasy
If only it was possible to hook up on single-phase house mains an arc torch-
based plasma gasifier to direct those toxic fumes into. I specifically looked
for access to three-phase power when choosing a residence because I don't see
power consumption requirements for the metal sintering gear coming down
anytime soon.

~~~
reportingsjr
FYI you can use either a static phase converter or rotary converter to convert
from single phase to three phase. A decent 20A three phase static converter
will run you about $500. Much easier than trying to find a house with three
phase!

~~~
yourapostasy
Yes, good point, thanks for pointing that out. I did look into phase
converters, but at the time was considering continuous usage of three phase
power, due to the energy losses. Of course with an infrequently-used 3D metal
sintering printer, it becomes much more practical to deploy a phase converter
for just the printer's gasifier. Bonus: the well-built digital controlled
rotary phase converters can last 30+ years, and from my poor electrical ed-
shu-ma-ka-shun I understand these better ones yield a true analog sine wave
good enough for even very sensitive electronics.

------
esw
3D printing reminds me so much of the early days of personal computing - it
was an expensive hobby for techies, the equipment was hard to configure, and
the everyday (practical) uses of the technology weren't immediately clear. But
like personal computing, I have no doubt that 3D printing will become an
essential part of our daily lives in the decades to come.

~~~
bsenftner
Just like today's printer cartridges, the 'print material' used by 3D printers
is insanely expensive. That's gotta change for any essential daily lives
application.

~~~
talkingquickly
Really? My impression has been that filament is pretty cheap e.g. < $30 per
kg. For printing small objects, enclosures, small replacement parts etc, the
filament cost has been pretty much negligible. That's why a lot of 3D print
shops end up telling people just to buy their own printer if their doing any
reasonable volume, because once the capital cost is out of the way, the
consumables are fairly inexpensive.

~~~
imaginenore
$30 is ridiculous. ABS plastic is around $1,000 per ton (or cheaper if you buy
10 tons). Does it really cost so much to make a wire out of the granules?

~~~
talkingquickly
That means there's approximately a 30x markup from raw ABS to a spool of 3D
printing filament being sold over the counter in a shop to a consumer. I don't
know how much filament costs if you buy industrial quantities rather than
consumer ones.

To be honest I don't know enough about industrial pricing to understand if
it's ridiculous or not, 30x from raw material to something being retailed at a
consumer level doesn't seem unbelievable to me.

Markup on a black ink cartridge (the original comparison) is something in the
region of 200x, so nearly an order of magnitude higher.

------
huuu
The problem here is patents and the cost of R&D.

The only reason why 3D printing became main stream is because some patents
expired and printers are being sold as kit instead of a product.

------
ghshephard
What this suggests to me, is that if you are making a lot of smaller
3d-prints, that don't leverage whatever special capability the UPrint has
(size?), then it makes a _lot_ more sense to have a large cluster of a couple
dozen Printrbots than a single UPrint.

------
ascorbic
They reason they both have the "pile of spaghetti" look is that they're both
FDM printers. The fact that even the most expensive FDM machines still give
that crappy-looking result is because that's all the technology can handle. If
he'd compared it with the results from even a consumer-grade SLA machine like
the Form 1, let alone professional SLA, SLS or inkjet such as Objet then it
would be completely different results.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
I'm completly bewildered by the current 3D printing fandom. Every FDM print
I've see just looks... off. I certainly am impressed people can make these
things casually, but from an aesthetic and even practical point of view, it
just looks terrible. I can't imagine using it for some of the more interesting
use cases I hear about like replacing a cosmetic part in your car or house.

I spent a bit of time on 3d printing forums and from what I can tell its just
figurine printing and hobbyist screwing around. These photos are very telling:

[http://maukcc.blogspot.com/2013/03/comparison-between-sla-
an...](http://maukcc.blogspot.com/2013/03/comparison-between-sla-and-fdm.html)

A low price SLA would be a serious game changer. The Kudo3D project will be
interesting to watch. I'd much rather spend $2000 on something that prints
beautifully than $600 on something that will print "piled spaghetti."

Interesting comment from the Kudo3D person on reddit with some details:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/25teeg/kudo3d_ce...](http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/25teeg/kudo3d_celebratory_tshirt_contest/chmt25g)

------
mcmancini
It's pretty amazing how the difference in object quality between the
enthusiast and professional systems has evaporated.

I would be interested to hear how frequently the Printrbot gets a clogged
extruder vs. the Stratasys, what print quality on ABS looks like between the
two units, what happens when you have a more complex shape with a lot of
overhangs, etc. Aside from warranty service, what are the advantages of the
professional system?

------
lmg643
Stratasys has a $3bn market cap, and this post basically says their flagship
product isn't much better than something that costs about 3% of the price.
Probably not good for Stratasys long term outlook - SSYS.

[https://www.google.com/finance?cid=61380041562207](https://www.google.com/finance?cid=61380041562207)

~~~
steejk
That printer is definitely not the flagship from Stratasys. It's actually
their 'entry level' product and seems to be aimed at companies who want a
printer comparable to consumer ones but with perhaps more durability and
better support.

A better comparison would be with the Fortus line which is used in commercial
applications for functional products.

------
im3w1l
Black color makes it hard to see the shape.

------
grandalf
This is a lower cost "prosumer" model and I believe has the best Amazon
ratings:

[http://www.makergear.com/products/m-series-3d-printers](http://www.makergear.com/products/m-series-3d-printers)

------
TomGullen
Don't know much about 3D printing but seems it's got a long way to go yet if
it's taking 7 hours to make a mug with some ugly scaring which costs between
$2 and $30 in materials.

If I want to print a mug I'd want it done in 5 minutes and cost $1, otherwise
what's the point of owning one from the point of view that one of these will
be in every household. Does anyone know if the current materials have any hard
limits on them as to how fast they can be manipulated for example?

~~~
jacquesm
The amazing thing is not to look at that it costs _all of $2 and all of 7
hours_ but that it costs _only $2 and only 7 hours_.

This capability is useless if you're making mugs but it is priceless when
you're prototyping.

Making mugs is entirely the wrong application.

~~~
logfromblammo
I believe the application is that you can make exactly one mug for only $2 and
7h. Then you can make exactly one tumbler. Then you can make exactly one
plate. Then you can make exactly one coat hook. Then you can make exactly one
collar clip that secures the armrest onto the driver's seat in your car. Then
you can make a chess piece to replace the one the dog chewed up. And then you
can make a bowling trophy.

Any specialized machine can absolutely annihilate the volume printer on the
basis of cost, and for many things also on the basis of quality, but you have
to produce thousands of units to pay for the machine.

You don't even need it to be a prototype. You just need to be making something
that no one else needs--or not enough other people to warrant building a
specialized machine to make that thing.

But then, if you do need that specialized machine, maybe there only needs to
be one of those, and you have just the right sort of machine to make unique
items....

~~~
jacquesm
Sure. But making mug _s_ is wrong. You can't compare the output of a machine
like this to an industrial process designed to make tens of thousands of
something.

Nothing beats a cheap ceramic mug for mug-ness.

And that goes for pretty much any one-off produced with a 3D printer that
attempts to re-create a mass produced item. It'll be more expensive, more
fragile, less pretty and in general less functional and strong.

~~~
logfromblammo
That's correct. Making _mugs_ is wrong. Making _mug_ might be correct. If you
are making a second one of anything, you are probably better off using the
volume-printed item as a physical model, to make a mold, which would then be
used to create two whatevers by a different process.

For mugs, that means constructing a plaster mold, then using liquid clay
(slip) to fill the mold. The clay is dried, glazed, and fired. If your mug
design is not already unique, someone else already does this faster and more
cheaply than you can. But if you want 20 mugs shaped like your own head,
you're still only going to volume-print one copy.

Or maybe you're making mugs out of food-grade silicone elastomer instead of
ceramic. You still only need one printed copy.

