If you get enough customers you can refinanciate the 3d printer. In the best case you advertise your hub to your friends and familiy, also you should invest at least 1000-1500€ to get a decent quality 3d printer, if you get one for 200€ or so the quality will be too low to attract customers.
Depending on the material that you’re printing with, you shouldn’t stay in the same room with the 3d printer for too long.
Harmless filaments are:
PLA
PLA/PHA by Colorfabb
XT by Colorfabb
T-Glase by Taulman
(usually) all kinds of PET, PETG and PET+
most foodsafe materials don’t release toxic fumes
Stay away from the fumes of:
ABS (abs is oil based and releases very toxic hazards and fumes, don’t stay for too long in the same room, keep the room ventilated and store ABS away from inginition sources, it’s easily inflammable)
Nylon (not that problematic)
Composites including one of those
All those statements are based on my knowledged and shouldn’t be taken granted, some manufacturers might rate their PLA as not harmless or some may produce harmless Nylon. This is just a general overview.
Both the Ultimaker 2 Go and the Printrbot Simple Metal are very good choises to start with, they both feature a large community and produce decent quality for a fair price. I’d go for the UM 2 Go due to the more solid build and if you want you could upgrade to a normal UM 2 or UM 2 extended while having some base knowledge about the UM products.
In no case you should place your 3d printer in the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom or living room. A workshop, garage or basement is recommended.
PS: keep the printer in a dry room and the room temperature shouldn’t vary too much throughout the year to ensure long-living mechanics.
I’m pretty sure, that Ultimaker will bring out the version 3 in the next 3 years or sooner, but the printers have a fairly long lifespan if you treat them right. You might need to replace a bearing or spring after a year or so, but that’s it.
There are still thousands of people that use their original Ultimaker 1 to great success, even today.
Due to the big community of the Ultimaker printers, there are a lot of modifications available to 3d print, like fittings for new hotends or extruders, to keep your printer up to date.
For me getting a 2.5k€ 3d printer was all worth it, although I needed some time to get it to work properly, it produces very nice quality prints and with increasing experience the fail rate minimizes. I’m currently modifying my 3d printer to be able to print with more different materials and in higher quality. The 3d printers will get better over the next years, but the main 3d printing aspect that is expected to explode is the filament market.
A year ago nearly all 3d printers could either use PLA or ABS and that’s it. Today good printers can produce large parts in up to 20 different materials, to get the most out of the 3d printer.
What’s a 3d printer good for, if it can produce high quality, large prints, but the material is too rigid / soft / weak / has a too low melting point.
There are many fields of use in which PLA or ABS are just inconvenient and therefore you (as a 3d printer owner) need to have the right material for the right job.
A very nice alternative to the UM 2 Go and the Printerbot Simple Metal would be the e3d BigBox which is currently on kickstarter.
e3d is a very popular brand for hotends and their all-metal hotends are capable of pushing the absolute limit of 3d printing. The all-metal hotend allows for higher temperatures, up to 400C and this enables you to print in nearly all plastics that are out there. The BigBox has a very large build volume, looks very sturdy and has some nice features, like automatic bed leveling, that make life a lot easier.
The BigBox should also be in your price range and is featured in a few different versions.
I’d go for the Cheapest one, with the e3d LITE hotend. The LITE hotend isn’t capable of insane temperatures and can’t extrude material that fast, but it’s enough if you just start to get into 3d printing.
Once you have more experience you can upgrade to an e3d all-metal hotend, which enables you to use more materials.
Cheers,
Marius Breuer
