Hi,
I have a budget of £1000 and a max of £1300, I am looking for a printer that is preferably pre-built or has very little assembly, A large-ish build volume and with good quality prints.
Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations?
I was thinking of the Wanhao Duplicator 6 or 5s?
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I personally love the Wanhao. If your looking for an open and easy to mod printer for the tinkerer then these are perfect. Quality is good and so are the prints!
I personally own the 5s mini and love it. My one issue with it is the fact that it uses .i files, so it makes you use the Wanhao maker software. But, with the 6 you are able to use a larger variety of slicers such as cura. But, the 5s has a larger build volume and is able to print at higher resolutions. So, I would personally choose the 5s as I think the pros outweigh the fact that you need to use the Wanhao maker software. Although, if you are willing to try it, I believe you can go to simplify 3D’s website. There they have an experimental profile for the D5 series for their software. When you slice your file, you have to take the .gcode and put it into the idea maker software provided on their website to transcode the .gcode into a .i file. The link to this page is Tip of the Day 16 - Wanhao 5S/5S mini with Simplify3D slicer - Simplify3D User Forum. So, I would recommend the D5s for its many pros. Also, if you haven’t seen already, both printers come with a 1 year limited warranty, and the support team is very responsive. But, again, I would personally choose the 5s.
I have two wanhoa duplicator 5s’s. I strongly suggest you skip them. They don’t support dual extruder upgrade and the bowden extruder/filament feeder design is flawed and will cause you endless trouble. We get equal or better quality prints out of the formbot. We found at higher resolution than 100 microns (20-50microns) the duplicators produce terrible quality prints that look like their melting, regardless of how slow we set it. We have 60 differentnt failed Marvin Keychain from trying to figure out how to get good quality prints at 20-50 microns (still don’t have a successful print that doesn’t look like it’s melting or parts of the layers were skipped. Were with the formbot we got excellent 50 micron prints no problem on the first try. We just bought a Formbot T-Rex that comes with dual extruder, a single high temp extruder and a laser engraver and a build size of 15x15x18 inches. We love it and want to sell our duplicators to buy more Formbots. Unlike the duplicator, Formbot is open source and uses gcode, we found it prints at the same speed as the duplicator 5s, and the tech support we received from Formbot has been the best we’ve experienced. Wanhoa support is horrible, they don’t honor their warrantys and their nozzle is proprietary so you can only buy parts from them. We’ve had our duplicators for 2yrs and they’ve been endless pains in the ass. In addition, wanhoa doesn’t keep their software updated, their slicer is outdated and garbage, and if you rotate a object and then scale it, it skews the proportions and their slicer software won’t work on anything above windows 7. I have emails from wanhoa support stating that if you don’t believe me. Highly recommended the formbot T-Rex. We took a gamble and bought ours through AliExpress and received amazing support from them, we got high quality prints the first print and getting it up and going took a couple hrs. With wanhoa it took a week to get a decent print, their pre set print settings are garbage. They were impossible to get a hold of, we had to get the retailer to intervene on multiple occasions to get a response from them, we’d pay them for replacement parts, follow up on the shipment and find out a month later they had ‘forgotten’ to ship our parts on multiple occasions. Formbot sent us a new control board no questions asked (ended up connections came unplugged while in transport so it wasn’t even broken) when we thought it was broken, express post for free, vs wanhoa who will charge you for the part and shipping. We don’t have to dick around with support materials anymore with the formbot, we use dissolvable filament and it works perfectly. We can’t see printing without it now, and the fact you can’t upgrade the 5s to dual extruder really holds the machine back. I have the email from Mary stating that it can’t be upgraded to dual extruder and they won’t sell me the parts to make it dual extruder. And your limited by the type of filament you can use in the duplicators. They won’t work with any elastic or flexible filament because of the filament feeding design, where with the formbot there’s no restrictions because it feeds the filament into the extruder directly above the extruder and is gravity assisted vs the wanhoa where you’re using the bowden style feeder with the long tube. In closing, stay away from wanhoa.
I recommed the ultmaker my friend has it, i use it. I have the robo also recommend. Lulzbot Taz 6 is great too.
ROBO and Ultimaker go also have mod and upgrade compatibility, awesome support.
I can not say much about the Wanhao 5 nor 6. But as for the Duplicator i3, I can tell you that it is money well spent. The new V2.1 has some of the mods straight from factory. Very little assembling required and free shipping through 3d printers online store. Great printer with high quality prints. Like any other 3D printer you need to tweak and play around with layer setting, temperature, fan settings and so forth. Those thing come from using the printer and time spent printing. Filaments can be an issue as well as ambient temperature, but those along with other factors are experiences you will learn to overcome. Get a 3d printer, learn it, tweak it and make it work for you and your needs. There are plenty of reviews for each printer sold on 3d printer online store, those will help you decide. Good luck on your purchase.
Hello Alec_Henry I strongly recommend WH Duplicator D6. Wanhao 5S has bigger build volume but its only limited to 3mm filament which is a little difficult to buy (in Indonesia, not sure at your country) as most printer use 1.75mm filaments which is widely use and available. WH D6 has max 20microns printing quality which is similar to WH 5S. Well you can save a bit more with WH D6 as 5S cost more.
By the way we are familiar user for Wanho printers, we use WH 4X, 4S, D6 and 5S, our I3 V2 is on its way :)You can check our print out trough our webiste or our instagram account: @I3d
Cheers.
Eddy Soh
PT.Inovasi Tiga Dimensi (i3D)
www.i3d.co.id
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ok thanks everyone for aiding my decision but i think i will go for a wanhao 6 and probably the 3 as well.
JoPri
11
I’m using a Flashforge Creator Pro (2015 model) which is a makerbot clone and it works flawless, i can even use the makerbot software without issues and it comes half the prices of the original makerbot printer. The Flashforge Creator Pro costs between 1100€ and 1300€ depending where you buy it.
I’ve already used it with ABS, PLA, PLA-thermossensiitive, Nylon, Flex, Wood, …
The flashforge Creator pro also has a closed case with a heated bed and provides dual extrusion capabilities.
You can find several shims / modifications for adding a glass plate, additional coolers, several filament spool holders and much more.
Have a look at my collection of mods and shims on Flashforge Creator Pro - Collections - JoPri - Thingiverse
Based on the “getting a 2016 best 3D printer guide” on 3Dhubs this device gets a 8.7 score in the enthusiast section and is less expensive than the others in that list. The only minor issue until now for me is that it’s making a bit of noice wile cooling/printing but for the rest i’m very happy with it and defenitly it was a good choice for me. 
Hi Alec,
The D6 really is a great choice.
We can give you the best price you will find online and plus we have a 5% promotion running at the moment. Hope that helps.
https://beautiful3dprinters.com/collections/all-printers/products/wanhao-duplicator-d6-professional-quality-affordable-priced-steel-frame-printer
All the best,
Mason - Beautiful 3D Printers
Cheers, thanks Mason, everywhere else they are about £700, now i can get two!
Hi, it seems that website is closed? Anyone know when it opens?
Hi there Alec,
The website shouldn’t be closed!
Send me an email at Mason@Beautiful3DDprinters.com and we can sort you out with a good price.
I know we have been offering a much cheaper price then some out there
Best Regards
Mason
By the way @Alec_Henry the current promotion is ‘save7’. This will get you a further 7% off. I forgot to mention this in my last message.
Happy we could get you a good deal. The link again - https://beautiful3dprinters.com/collections/all-printers/products/wanhao-duplicator-d6-professional-quality-affordable-priced-steel-frame-printer
Mason
Beautiful3DPrinters.com
High Precision 3D Printer, I recommend this all metal frames 3d printer with price only £900, print size: 280 x 180 x 180mm.
Do not hesitate. Wanhao Duplicator 6 is better quality (1 extruder) but no bad surprise.
we talk in detail about my topic or on FB
