I have $5000 to spend on 3D printer(s) for school 3D printing programs; Elementary and high school with about 20 kids per program. I am trying to balance quantity vs reliability vs portability. Looking for recommendations. Thank you!

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Hi Lance,

You should have a look at our Best 3D Printer Guide 2016 Best 3D Printer Guide 2023 | Hubs

The guide is divided in categories like ‘budget’, ‘DIY’ or ‘plug’n’play’, shows pros and cons of each printer, and reviews from the users with pics of sample prints. I hope that helps :slight_smile:

Cheers!

Thanks for the reply Sandra! I have looked at that extensively. Many of the printers would fit my programs so I am still trying to narrow it down. I wanted to give one more chance of data collection before my decision.

Thanks

Lance

Hi Lance,

You might want to check out http://polar3d.com/ I believe they are even giving out discounts to educators and schools. They are new on the market, but they are really aiming to support 3d printing in education.

Best of luck!

MakerX

Actually, looks like they have a special for just under $5000. 6 printers and 36 rolls of filament. I would definitely consider it in your position. They even have a class friendly cloud infrastructure. Definitely check them out.

I don’t mean to sound critical, but especially in a classroom environment it’s pretty important that a printer has a large community behind it, in case something goes wrong so that the community can help you fix it. People may not always be able to figure out what’s wrong themselves. Polar 3D printers in general (not the company, the motion system) are extremely obscure and don’t have all that much documentation behind it, so something went wrong you’d likely be limited to support from just the company, not from a community.

That being said, the pricing for that bundle does look extremely attractive. I’d suggest that @LanceCCSSC should do a bit more research into it before choosing it, but it’s certainly an option.

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Check out www.raise3d.com too they have a new line of printers and currently still at a 10% discount

I would not preorder a Kickstarter printer: the chance that they’re not ready to ship for months or even that they won’t ship at all is extraordinarily high. Look at the Pirate3D Buccaneer, the EZ3D Phoenix, the Eventorbot, the various Cobblebots, etc.

My suggestion about Kickstarter printers is that you should only buy them after they’ve started shipping to the public, and there already are satisfied users.

They already delivered 3 batches and end of this month the last batch will go out with the kickstarter ones.

As far as i understood they will even start shipping some of the pre-orders as soon as end of this month.

Yes i do agree that a kickstarter project (its now on pre-order no longer a kickstarter) can be risky but its also a really nice printer for the money you pay for it. Upgradable and easy to maintain and raise3d has a great communication with their users

Dear friend, have a look at this site to choose one you like . personally recommend you printer kit and almost you can get 15sets at USD5000 http://www.aliexpress.com/store/1759640

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I do not know what age the kids will be that work with the printer. But 15 printers under 5000 … then i really wonder about the sturdiness and if its safe and enclosed

3D printers have a lot of dangers (fingers getting stuck or burned) depending on age i would highly suggest an enclosed environment. Not just for safety reasons but also since it will print ABS etc better with an enclosure

If the machines are under lock and key and only operated by the teachers it might be a different story (but whats the fun in that then :wink: )

I would highly recomend the MakerBot 5th gen 3D printers. They are best in class under 5k for k12. My company has been selling them to school districts for a year and they are tried and true. Easy learning curve, great print quality and the best dependability. MakerBot has the strongest presence in k12 for a reason. They have the largest ecosystem available for teachers, by teachers. We offer special k12 discounts and help you along the way!

Feel free to reach out to me and I can offer more information!

Dan

http://www.vispgroup.com

http://www.makerbot.com

We have 2 Ultimakers and a Cube Pro Trio. The Cube Pro is so robust it is like driving a tank. The Ulitmakers are so fragile, it is like holding a butterfly. We are always doing preventative maintenance on the Ultimakers.

The only disadvantage of the Cube Pro is it is not competitive due to higher material cost.

Our Cube Pro is 1 year old and we are selling it at about half of the retail price.

Hi Lance, I work for a school district in Michigan and have been supporting Elementary and High School 3D printing at my district since 2013 and I would without hesitation recommend the Ultimaker Original Plus Kit for your schools. (US supplier dynamism.com will give you an EDU and volume discount if you buy 2 or more) We initially tried several other printers but quickly saw the major quality issues and high maintenance issues of the other brands, at the end of the 1st year we standardized on the UMO+ and have been supper happy ever since. At this point I have helped schools put together over 20 of these kits. I actually run a weekend long work shop to help schools get started. SO here’s my rational for the advice I’m offering you.

As anyone (who is not a sales person) will tell you there is no 3D printer out there that will be maintenance free and this is why I strongly advise you to consider a Kit printer. I have found crucial component to an active program is empowering building level people to run their own print jobs, do basic maintenance, and troubleshoot any issues. I have found over last few years that the absolute fastest and best way to create this building level expertise is to have a local team of 2-3 people (MS and HS kids could be part of this) assemble the printer from the ground up. This way they have first hand experience and understanding of how the printer works, how to run print jobs, and how to maintain the printer.

I have seen other kits and many require soldering, using many different tools, and many hours of build time. The UMO+ kits are beautifully engineered and the finished printers strike a wonderful balance between high quality and hackability. Team members only need to use basic tools such as a pliers and a screwdriver. There is NO soldering, NO wires to strip, NO saws or power tools. Total build time averages between 18-20 hours.

As I mentioned in my personal experience the UMO+ is by far the best for schools and clubs…as in… most accurate, fastest, easy to maintain, low downtime, large enough build area to keep up with a class of 25-30 kids, great support, very active global community, immaculately engineered, fully open source (no limits to the learning potential due to trade secrets), the box shape helps keep kid’s fingers out of the way, easily put on a cart and wheeled down the hall, winner of many 3d printer awards over the years, including MAKE: Magazine’s Most Accurate and Fastest Award, and Best Open Hardware Award. To sum up, the Ultimaker printers strike a perfect balance between reliability, durability and cost. They meet the most important selection criteria (for schools) IMHO:
1. Low downtime and everything end user serviceable. (When the printer is down no one is happy.)
2.Precision and accuracy (To insure that all kids get a good print of their model, the 1st model should be just as nice as the 500th model)
3.Speed and Build Volume (When printing for a class of over 25 kids, you need to print several objects at a time. The 8x8x8inch build volume allows for that.)
4. PLA printing (non-toxic fumes and bio-degradable) AND OPEN filament - as in you do not have to buy over priced proprietary filament from the manufacturer.

5. Open Source (No limits to student’s involvement and depth or tinkering.)

These above 5 points should help you evaluate any other printers that are out there.

ALSO - do your homework. Check out the forums where users of the printer you are considering are collaborating, and helping each other. DON’T just read the ads and look at the price. For example the Polar Printer got a horrible review by MAKE in their 2016 printer evaluation. A bad 3D printer is worst then no 3D printer (take it from me, I had to sell our Type A Machine since it was horrible and we wasted so much time trying to get the darn thing to work, also we got an early M2 MakerGear printer with has been nothing but trouble) And any MakerBot should be right off your list since they are very poor quality especially their 5th gens , which are so bad that they are actually the subject of a law suit that the shareholders are bringing against the company for lying to the public about their design flaws.

AND AND - make sure you save from of you $5K for PLA, you’ll want a bunch of that. And make sure to get off stuff, like ColorFabb, don’t get cheap stuff since the quality of the PLA directly impacts you ability to get good prints. The High School class I helped develop (1 semester ~25 kids , uses about 4KG of plastic each time).

If you want a lower cost printer and are dead set against building a kit. I’ll just throw this out there…I have been watching the forums for the PrinterBot PLAY printer, and looks looks like it’s a possible good option for schools. Of course it’s a pretty small build volume so I’m not sure I would want one due to the importance of the extra space when you’re printing for a elm classroom for 30 kids.

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Just wanna make it short, just orientate!

I make awesome things with it!

Interesting. We run a few Ultimakers 2+ for our business and never had a problem. I know other’s running older one’s, again zero (or minor) problems.

Compared to anything else on the market in that price range, they are amazing (and then some). Everything else requires so much tweaking and maintenance that they are not viable as a reliable income source.

To upgrade you would have to spend $50,000+ for a small industrial grade printer (which gives you quite similar results in quality).

Easy, Get a Ultimaker 2+ or Ultimaker 2+ Extended + filaments, if you need a few printers then get a few kits and assemble them and tune them.

You don’t want to be tied down to a locked system, especially when they stop producing them (which is happening all the time). So you have to go open source (just don’t buy garbage filaments).

You want fast or high quality results, Ultimaker is once again on the top in the FFF category (FDM is a trademark term, never use it).

Reliability is once again a high on the list of Ultimakers. If you want a brick that never has issue, you need to add a zero to your budget. So next best thing is a printer with good customer support, available parts and a large community behind it. Ultimaker has it all. It’s also a lot less finicky than most other printers.

Lastly you mentioned portability. It’s quite portable. 1 adult can easily move it around and you should not need to re-level the bed every time it is moved, as long as you are careful with it (bang it around and i would suggest to relevel the bed).

Hello LanceCCSSC,

I run the Maker Lab at my school so I have done extensive research about 3D printers in education. My top choice for printing in schools is a TAZBOT 5 they have huge print volumes which will be great if you have a lot of kids and they are all open source so you get get cheap filament and don’t have to pay crazy high prices. My other recommendation is a Maker Bot Replicator has a lot of nice features that can add to an administrators experience, however they are not cheap for the printer or the filament. My Final recommendation is the PowerSpec 3D Ultra/Pro printer ($700/each) they are only found at Micro Center and they have a pretty good print volume and they run well for what they cost and they are great for people just learning to print (My first printer). Hope this helps if you have any other questions feel free to message me.

Jacob

Great info and a huge help! I have been looking at the Bee printer https://beeverycreative.com/) also but as of yet don’t sell in US… I am definitely leaning toward an Ultimaker. Thanks again!

Thanks Jacob! This helps!