Your favourite Cartesian printer?

[Captain Starfish]

In a followup to this thread, work has decided to look at buying a printer around the $1000-3000 mark.

After the shameful performance of my RMax V1 and MatterControl compared to the flawless run of the UP another guy had in there, they have decided they don't want anything to do with a Rostock or a Delta. Baby, bathwater, see ya.

So now they're looking for something with a decent build volume, good resolution and pretty quick. I know, it sounds like the kind of shopping list that brought me to SeeMe in the first place, but that door is now closed for these guys

CreatBot and Ultimaker 2 are the frontrunners at the moment, anyone care to comment on either of these or recommend something else worth a look?

Other considerations:
- Powder printers are out - they want to print cheap production parts in ABS and maybe nylon, the zCorp gear just isn't strong enough and they can't justify a laser sintering job.
- Cost of resin kills the Droplit style jobs.
- Hostless and preferably networked printing are a big bonus but I get the impression +1 octoprint raspberry pi and that's taken care of anyway.
- Vendor lockin on filament? Instant disqualification.

[teoman]

Having done these kinds of purchases before there is another parameter you should be looking at. How much extra work will YOU need to do (or want to do). Like your raspberry example, you will be the one who has to spend time on it. And who will be taking care of the printer? When there is a nozzle issue will you be the one dismantling it and fiddling with it? You should then chose the printer that is easiest for you.

[teoman]

You should re-calculate the cost of the resins in my opinion. It may not be such an expensive option. You gain on speed and then there are also the costs of acetone and cleaning of beds etc etc etc...

Right now i think the cost is 2x (resin vs abs).

Depending on where you live that changes a lot, for me it is 40 usd /kg for abs vs does not exist.

[Captain Starfish]

I will have very little to do with this unit. At work I live in the offices with the other engineers and the printer will be housed, tinkered, operated and maintained by the workshop crew.

Tinker time for me is at home, and I won't do much work related printing anyway coz at work I'm just the code monkey.

[geneb]

You might want to remind them what happens to people that make decisions using a sample size of one.

g.

[BONE]

You might want to remind them what happens to people that make decisions using a sample size of one.

g.

Warning sarcasm:
Upper management never makes the wrong decisions based off of engineering declensions that did not recommend doing it and that more data points were required.
End sarcasm:

[Generic Default]

So the big issues here are noise and easy of use? Some of the printers are definitely consumer friendly, but at the same time it typically limits them in functionality. Hopefully in the next year or so the reprap type printers will get easier to use with auto-leveling and stuff. I switched away from Slic3r a long time ago because it doesn't make good tool paths. Cura seems to be much easier to use.

If I worked in an office I would probably want something easy, too. The extra money on the printer and proprietary filament are worth it when you aren't the one paying for it!
SeeMeCNC really should do something about the noise though. Dampers and 400 step/rev steppers would fix the problem entirely without any redesign needed.

I wanted a cartesian printer, but the Rostock ended up being the best value. I have special printing needs that the proprietary printers can't meet, like printing 50 micron layers in nylon and stuff.

[heathenx]

I have a FlashForge Creator Dual that I absolutely love. It will outprint my RMaxV2 in regard to print quality but it has a smaller build volume. So far that hasn't been too much of an issue but I would like it to be a little bigger. I'd definitely buy another one.

On the other hand, my RMax is a lot fun to play with since it's so easy to mod.

[Kevinvandeusen]

We have several flashforge, they are hard to beat for a cartesian.

[626Pilot]

What's a good Cartesian if I want a 200x200mm (8x8") or larger build footprint? Ideally enclosed. But not MakerBot, because I don't want to pay a 2x premium.

[Captain Starfish]

No, Generic Default, the big issues here were noise and reliability.

The Up just worked.

The Max was noisy when it was running, had curling issues on bigger prints than I normally do (so I don't normally see them and thus hadn't bothered tuning any more) and had several false half-prints with the latest version of MatterControl crashing.

Now I have the Astrosyns on board, I'm using MatterControl reasonably happily on the latest dev release since then and it's happy but their experience was not a good one so they've canned the idea of deltas in general and looking at a "more normal" printer.

I'll pass on the details of the FlashForge to add to the CreatBot and Ultimaker - I think they're after a 200mm per side build volume which means the Up and several others are out of the game. Thanks for the suggestions.

As for me? My Max and I have a long way to journey together yet before I abandon it.

[Kevinvandeusen]

just finished building a rigidbot, with a 10x10x10, they also make 16x12x10, worked spot on after calibration, and is very well built

[Captain Starfish]

And just to be clear, the more I look at them chasing down other printers, the happier I am with my choice in buying a Rostock.

Just a shame it was having a rough day on that particular day.

[nitewatchman]

just finished building a rigidbot, with a 10x10x10, they also make 16x12x10, worked spot on after calibration, and is very well built

One of my young engineers has just bought a RigidBot Big (16x12x10). Assembly took about 10 hours and it seems to work quite well. Quality is good, perhaps better than my RMV2. We have ordered one for our office to suppliment and likely replace the aging Z450.

We have been printing the same objects on the two printers using the same slicer, filament, slicer parameters as much as possible considering the difference in geometry between the printers. One very obivious and nice advantage to the RigidBot is the flat effector travel plane of the nozzle. No matter what I do or try the plane of the RMV2 is never quite flat.

Printer uses a 24VDC Power supply. Heatup is fast but the heat strip is in the center of the Aluminum build surface and so far it looks like heat varies considerably across the surface.

[Polygonhell]

I've built at least prototypes of most of the cartesian designs, specifically standard table Y head X, HBot, CoreXY and Ultimaker.
Of them I would stick with the designs that keep X and Y independent, so that's table Y or Ultimaker.
Of those I prefer the Ultimaker design, it tends to promote correct alignment and removes slop from the X axis, but as a result correct alignment is critical to smooth function.

The biggest issues with cartesian printers tends to be the Z axis, because most use screws (the UP doesn't) and the bearings that tend to be used have excessive slop, any none straightness in the screw tends to be visible in the print, it's often referred to as Z Wobble. I spent the best part of 2 months trying to get rid of the Z Wobble on my Mendel Max, I did finally track it down, but I wouldn't wish the debugging experience on anyone.
The Up doesn't have this issue because it uses a belt to drive the Z, the downside of that is it can't do really low layer heights.
The Ultimaker doesn't tend to show the issue because it uses 12mm rods for Z and 4 bearings to one screw, slight variation in the bearing alignment tends to take out the slop.

If I were buying a cartesian printer today with a $2K+ budget I'd be very tempted by an Ultimaker2
If I were building a cartesian kit for <$1K I'd probably go with a Mendel 90, because I have a lot of respect for NopHead and I like the attention to detail in the design

[Kevinvandeusen]

I have covered the olate with lots of parts several times with great success. I did not notice the heater pattern. I wll check mne out soon

just finished building a rigidbot, with a 10x10x10, they also make 16x12x10, worked spot on after calibration, and is very well built

One of my young engineers has just bought a RigidBot Big (16x12x10). Assembly took about 10 hours and it seems to work quite well. Quality is good, perhaps better than my RMV2. We have ordered one for our office to suppliment and likely replace the aging Z450.

We have been printing the same objects on the two printers using the same slicer, filament, slicer parameters as much as possible considering the difference in geometry between the printers. One very obivious and nice advantage to the RigidBot is the flat effector travel plane of the nozzle. No matter what I do or try the plane of the RMV2 is never quite flat.

Printer uses a 24VDC Power supply. Heatup is fast but the heat strip is in the center of the Aluminum build surface and so far it looks like heat varies considerably across the surface.