I’m planning on using a plug and print model like de davinci 0A 2.0 Duo for company use regarding prototyping. My question is whether is worth putting down a 600 extra euros for a larger model like the Wanhao duplicator 5S. Would I be able to get return on my investment by putting it on the hub? if not? what would be better models in this priceclass? im not out on making a quick buck but rather investing more personal capital in order to buy a better printer.
thanks in Advance
Tom
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Hi.
I am using a Wanhao Duplicator 5 and (since two weeks) a Leapfrog Creatr HS.
I am printing commercial parts for my customers. Not much, but I am producing and get money for. 
In my opinion:
Forget plug and print. In compare to the professional printers you can save a lot of money, but you need a lot of time, until the printer makes what you want in the quality you want with the material you want.
I am also a long time member of 3dhubs. Until today there were no orders from this page. Maybe I am to expensive.
But when getting cheaper, its not worth working for. (In my calculation)
Best regards.
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I use a DaVinci 1.0 and as for out of the box print and go it is fantastic. The software is tolerable and works. About the 100 hour mark of steady printing. A few of the electrical connections on the extruder hot end began giving me errors and I replaced them with automotive style connectors. The other issue I discovered was the wiring bundle that travels along the y axis with the carriage would become snagged and pull tight which eventually caused an intermittent error on the x motor. I simply removed the popped on covers and zip ties holding the harness in the circuit board area to lengthen the harness. Otherwise my little printer was well worth the investment and has one of the larger print areas available, making it an excellent platform and quite a bargain. There is a huge support community online. If you don’t mind a little basic maintenance and tackling things yourself this is a great group of machines, and now I understand xyz printing has released refillable cartridges which will finally open the machines to the use of exotic and in house recycled materials. 5 stars for the product but a what you see is what you get for support from the manufacturer at the moment.
The unit I have is a Stratasys Uprint se plus. It’s a fully pro unit I payed $28 000.canadian for it.theirs only 500 hours on it their made to go 5000+hours and their is still warranty on it looking for $15000 Canadian dollars for it comes with filament.
Hi Koendie,
I bought a DaVinci 1.0 last fall and a MakerGear M2 this spring. Like Cliff, I had some trouble with the heater cables for the print head. Overall the DaVinci does nice for larger geometry, but struggles with with fine detail. It also seems to have a pretty high failure rate. The M2 does work much better, but admittedly costs four times as much. The DaVinci is more “plug in play” to setup and start, but requires much more baby sitting while it runs. Now, I use the DaVinci when the M2 is busy, and I need to print very basic parts. I have a blog with lots of pictures of parts from the DaVinci. I have a post with some pics of Marvin printed by both the DaVinci (white ABS) and the M2 (black ABS).
http://www.squeezengine.com/#!blog/c231p
If you want plug-and-play, in my opinion, you can’t get better than an Up! My Up! Mini has worked fine for 3 years and consistently turns out good ( not great ) prints. Haven’t seen results from the Up! Box yet but I’m expecting it’ll be very good, if a little pricey.
Cheers,
AndyL
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Take a look at the hubs in your area and see if they have a good number of reviews.
I live in a very design oriented city, so anyone looking for a 3D print has a ton of options, lots of hubs, print shops and shapeways is located here. I’ve been on 3D hubs for about 4-5 months and have not received any orders, the 20 others in my area have between 0-7 reviews with one exception of 14, but they have been on 3D hubs for 2 years.
I have the XYZ Davinci 1.0, after flashing it and using thirdparty software for slicing and printing it is working near perfect with a lot better print quality then the XYZ software delivered.
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Last year their was just under 5000 printers in November now it’s doubled. I use to get a job a week but not any more. The market is over saturated.
Hey @dudekmaestro, sorry to hear about the lack of orders. Few ways to overcome this is either by pimping up your Hub profile, making sure to add all the awesome prints you’re doing, so that people can see the quality of your work. Another way is to promote your prints through networking: friends & family, various social channels you’re active on or by attending 3D printing events. Word of mouth is as effective as it’s underrated, so be sure to make good use of it. Happy printing!
