A little more than what you might want to spend, but Gizmo 3D Printers with resin and a projector start at $3600 and you can print continuously at 1mm per minute with a projection area of 70mm x 39mm with the standard machine. That print speed can be upgraded to 3mm per minute with a projection area of 110mm x 62mm. An area of 325mm x 183mm can be printed at 0.5mm per minute
Hi, I would get a Zortrax, no doubts. If interested wecan print a sample.
Regards
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could you give more details on what exactly you are looking for?
- Materials
- Nozzle size and temperature
- Primary application (what type of prototypes : engineering parts, figurines, jwellery etc.)
-Build volume.
will be able to give a good answer with these parameters.
EP3D
10
You could always make your own! With $2500 you can have a VERY large printer. I purchased some ballscrews from ebay cheap for the z and y axis of a self designed printer. Along with some 2020 aluminum extrusions from openbuilds and readily available hotends from ebay, you can have a printer with almost invisible layer lines. Of course it helps that i have a laser cutter and cnc available for any kind of custom plates that needed to be cut.
Emil_1
11
What build area does your prototyping require?
For FDM type of printers I would say the Ultimaker 2+ (extended). The upgraded material feeder made the whole machine very reliable. I’m printing almost daily (mostly prototypes) with it since 4 months now and it never clogged, skipped layers or whatever and hits 95% succesfull prints I guess. The remaining 5% would also be good if I made the right settings in Cura, so it was not machine failure. It handles a lot of filaments (I did some succesfull experiments with flexible materials and Colorfabb XT, HT, NGEN) but I mostly print PLA. Bed levelling is easy and the whole machine has a nice build quality and reliable sense to it. Print quality and precision is very very good, if you want to print slowly that is.
There are printers for sale with better specs at a better price, but from what I have seen they do not have the same print quality as the Ultimaker. The fact that Ultimaker has it’s own software package (cura) which is optimized for it, makes the whole experience a lot smoother and without hassles I guess.
You can also consider the BCN3D Sigma, while it’s promising on paper I have not yet seen it make prints of equal precision as the UM2+. Also it’s a lot more noisy 
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I think there shouldn´t be a discussion, Zortrax is beyond any other competitor for this budget 
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I
would defiantly recommend the Zortrax. Have a Formlabs too, in terms of quality the formlabs is great. Also feasibility for formlabs is much better. If you design your prototypes to fit FFD requirements, Zortrax can provide great Quality.
Zortrax M200. Pretty fast, reliable, great value for the money. I use it (primarily) for prototyping, too. Z-ULTRAT is really great material…
Artiz
16
With that budget you really should consider the Ultimaker 2… you’ve got a few choices in that price range at the moment but stretching to the Ultimaker 2 Extended plus would be my advice. You could always forget the plus and upgrade to an Olsson block yourself… easy upgrade. Having said that the main downside of the Ultimaker is no dual extrusion for support material but it makes up for that with it’s higher quality results.
It’s also definitely a plug n play type printer… however you will still have to get your hands dirty at some point along the line… but community support is also second to none. One bit of final advice is DO NOT buy a 3D printer which has it’s own filaments (proprietary)… always too restrictive if you want to experiment with new materials regarding prototyping.
Good review here…
Much luck
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Take a good look at the Tiertime UPBox. I run one and it has been a breeze to operate, produces good prints and has a fairly large build volume. If some curious person hadn’t opened the lid, let the heat out and warped the part, my first print would have been sold to a customer - not bad for a Friday evening “impulse” purchase…
Artiz
18
Zortrax is a proprietary printer isn’t it… good but you can only use their filaments… zero restrictions required in my opinion…
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I would recommend the Zortrax M200. Look at the stats in 3D Hubs and see the great number of reviews that has been posted. This is an no non sense machine that performs right out of the box. Perfect for prototypes. The filaments are not that expensive for the quality you get and makes up for the failed prints you would spend your cheap filament on with other printers.
Just what I was about to post, its hard to say what is the best, the “best” for what?
Do you have any existing experience with 3D printing?
Are you mechanically minded or do you need something plug and play?
“My main goal is prototyping so print quality is most important to me”. I couldn’t find better prototyping solution than Zortrax M200 + Z-ULTRAT so I bought M200 a month ago. I don’t care if it uses proprietary material as long as it produces no-problem high-quality prints using really sturdy material.
Hello & Good Day,
Dear wm1059,
If you are looking at high quality print. I can support and provide the services to you.
I have high end machine such as Fortus 900mc & Object Connex 260.
Look forward to hear from you soon.
Thank You & Best Regards,
Mohd Shukri Muhammad
Artiz
23
So you don’t care that you can’t print a whole host of new and experimental filaments which include Bronze, Copper, Wood, Carbon Fiber, Moldlay (for lost wax molds)… the list is endless and growing daily. Prototyping is about experimentation not restriction…
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Fuad
24
Hi,
the question is what you are prototyping it for.
Are you creating very small (take something like formlabs) objects or larger ones (prefer a FDM printer)?
If you print large objects, the question is how large, because then it affects plate size of the printer.
Also, do you want to sprint specific materials (e.g. more flexible plastic) or just general purpose plastic?
One recommendation I can give you is to pay attention to have a dual extruder with additional support material.
Otherwise you might end up with an high quality print itself, but support material hanging around.
With this in mind the range of printers you will find for around 2500 will be limited enough for you to decide
Hope this helps and enjoy!
Atom 2.0
Of course, I am biased, but you won’t find any other printer with a sturdier frame or better accuracy. At Maker Faire Bay Area people were in disbelief at the quality. My favorite quote from the fair was, “Is this really FDM?!” referring to a sample print at 50µ. It’s the only premium delta machine on the market, and deltas are proven to be both accurate and sturdy by their nature. It has a bunch of innovative features to make printing and servicing easier than usual too.
On top of all that, you’ll be able to order the accessory heated bed module from the web shop at the end of the month, and a dual extruder system will be ready at the end of the next. We are also shipping early to beta testers like yourself (professional prototyping, commercial, and research applications, etc.) if you are interested.
Good luck with your search!
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I bought a Raise N2 plus double printhead and this was my worst investment ever, odes only print PLA with fair(not good) results the rest of the materials or don’t stick together(PVA with most of the other materials, Polysupport with most of the other materials and huge problems with build plate surface, even Buldtak does not do the job with those materials) Abs only from Formfura and there only the clear scent is working) the rest of the materials give horrible surfaces some surfaces look as if you had printed a cat with a 1 million volt electroschocker up its a… others look like hairballs and deformed and very nasty protruding surfaces etc. A horrible and unreliable printer. I will go in my next printer as well for a Ultimaker 2 extended. I have a zortrax 200 but the material choice is too limited, and the new one which is only printing proprietary material i don’t go for because this terrible experience i have made with Stratasys Dimension elite where you pay for a new printhead which from the parts would be 120 US$ worth they ask 5000 US $ for. So now way if the printer can not be equipped with other printheads or when you can only use proprietary material. Don’t ever go for that, it will be a very expensive experience which your clients are mort willing to pay for.
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