Hello All!
I am very new to this site and would love to call on all of the lovely experience here.
I am working for a company in the U.S. and we are looking to purchase a 3D printer for rapid prototyping purposes. Currently, we design a prototype, then send it to be machined (typically out of aluminum) at the local machine shop. The lead time on the machining is typically about two weeks. This is not very effective and consumes a lot of valuable time.
Thus far, I have narrowed it down to the Ultimaker 2 and CubePro. We want one of these higher-end desktop printers because we want quality, but not a high investment cost (to keep it low-risk). I have used the resources of a few 3D printers from a 3rd party company but have not gotten the quality that I want. Hole sizes are warped, dimensions are not consistent with designs, etc. Therefore, we want our own.
What is important to me is high quality prints with high dimensional stability. Low maintenance cost after purchase is great. Customer/community support is excellent. Intuitive setup and operation is a must. And easy post-print “clean up” (removing any support material, time it takes to prepare the printer for next print, etc.).
So, I am wondering if anyone has any insight as to which one I should get. Perhaps someone that has experience with both printers. Pros and cons?
Thank you all!
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I can only comment on the Ultimaker 2, as I have no experience with the CubePro.
- High quality prints with high dimensional stability - Not a problem, particularly when printing at slower speeds (under 50mm/sec). The printer is very accurate, and delivers good quality when properly tuned. The accuracy is a big reason why I went for an Ultimaker 2 instead of an SLA printer like the Form 1 (after reading several reviews complaining about inaccurately calibrated Form1 printers).
- Low maintenance cost - It depends. Some of the replacement parts are a bit overpriced if you buy them from the manufacturer. That said, other than the PTFE coupler the parts seem to be very robust and not prone to breakage or significant wear and tear. The entire printer is open-source, so you also have the option of sourcing or fabricating your own replacement parts.
- Customer/community support is excellent - Check. There’s a very active community that will answer your questions, help troubleshoot issues, or just comment on how nice your prints look. Official Ultimaker representatives participate as well.
- Intuitive setup and operation - Also check. When the printer arrives it will walk you through a setup wizard that will get you up in running, probably in less than 10 minutes. It’s an easy printer to work with, even if you have no prior experience with 3d printing. And perhaps just as importantly, it’s also a very difficult machine to break.
- Easy post-print “clean up” - Yes. There’s generally no clean-up apart from removing your print and the skirt from the buildplate. The difficulty of removing support material depends upon the type of supports you use, but can be more time-consuming (although many parts will print fine without supports). It’s a good idea to manually clean the nozzle every few prints. That takes maybe 15 minutes or so.
- Time it takes to prepare the printer for next print - Once the old print is off the buildplate, you can start the next print. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes for the buildplate to cool to the point where the finished part just slides right off. However, if you’re impatient (and your part is strong enough) it’s usually possible to yank or scrape the part off the buildplate without letting it cool first. If you do so, you can start your second print seconds after the first one finishes.
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Ultimaker will be the better of these two choices. Keep in mind the reason straysys and 3Dsystems selll higher end printers that cost 60-100k is that they are faster and more importantly dimensional. If extreme precision overall matters more than asthetics and use; you need to know that a desktop FDM printers are succeptible to a lot of variables and not the right choice for this. My co. offers middle of the road precision through sla tech and dlp. This reduces a lot of downtime and sometimes but not always depending on the application gets a prototype ready for casting.
Jason
co3Dprints.com
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I reckon the biggest aspect of the ultimaker over the cube pro is that you aren’t lock in to just using their print cartridges.
There is a vast variety of filaments out there flexible, bronzefill, woodfill, copperfill and not to mention colors! And $109 for a cartridge is pretty expensive.
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In my opinion the cube is not a real printer, it is more suited as a foot stool, than anything else.
The Ultimaker 2 is an excellent machine and has intuitive software. However the support material can be a bit difficult to remove. Also the UM2 has a Bowden extruder, which prevents slow printing and a good retraction, both are important (in my experience) if you want to create holes and fine detail. The best printer we have that ticks all the boxes is the zortrax m200. My staff and I were all really amazed when we saw the quality this machine produces.
My company any is not related to Zortrax in any way and this comment is my own opinion and does not reflect the view of this company.
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forget cubepro. software doesn’t work well. printer is not reliable at all. material super expensive and cartridges blocks but if you are still interested in, i can sell you mine 
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Another Ultimaker2 owner here.
Keep in mind that support structure is dependent on the slicing software. You can use the slice Cura but you don’t have to. There are quite a few advanced parameters you can change in order to make support structures easier to remove.
Dimensional accuracy is very good but it is dependent on the filament you use. So make sure to print with high quality stuff (colorFabb, Faberdashery or Ultimaker’s own filament).
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I echo all the comments here relating to the Ultimaker 2. I’ve made engineering models using mine where I’ve had a dimensioned drawing to refer to at the end to check the print. Generally I’ve found that the difference to the nominal dimensions to be around 0.2mm (and certainly no more than 0.3mm), these are well within injection mouding tolerances… I would attribute this difference to around 0.1mm of error from the printing itself and around 0.1mm due to material contraction after printing.
If you want super accuracy for holes you can always design them to be slightly smaller than the intended dimension for printing and then post-drill them to the correct size.
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Honestly I think you’re going to be disappointed with these 3D printers. I have an Ultimaker2 and love it, but it is simply not in the same class as a machine costing 10x as much or more. You are used to machined aluminum. People on here claiming you’ll get similar tolerances to injection molding are out of their minds drinking the CoolAid. I had a Stratasys Dimension machine for a number of years (cost was $20k in 2006). It was limited to the materials you could print, and the materials were much more expensive than bulk spools, it couldn’t do a layer thinner than 10 thou, etc. But I could design a part and it worked every time, I always knew how it would come out. No babysitting ever, no handholding, it just worked. I have yet to see that kind of predictability and repeatability out of a home 3D printer. You’re used to paying for machining, material cost for any 3D printer will be dwarfed by that. I just want you to understand that you will not get results comparable to machined aluminum, or injection molding, out of this level of low-end machine (UM2 included). All that said, if you have the patience and time to monkey with it and learn, you can do some incredible stuff with them, and send out fewer things to be machined or printed on industrial machines. Let’s just be realistic guys. Seriously.
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Take a look at the attached images. Resonable tollerances?
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That’s nice, but it’s not very convincing. The top surface looks slightly over-extruded, which isn’t a problem when you print with infill, but can be an issue when you print something at 100% solid. Maybe that’s not a big deal. But look at those corners – they are both rounded and bowed. Print a cylinder that’s 2mm OD, and another that’s 80mm OD, and compare the error with the model. Print a hole that’s 2mm ID, and another that’s 80mm ID. Print a part that’s 15cm long and 2mm wide. Print a part with supports. Print an overhang without supports. In my experience, these machines do not hold the tolerances that the bigger machines do. That’s why they still make them and charge so much.
You don’t have to sell me on an UM2, I have one and love it. But I’ve had machining equipment, and done injection mold design, and worked with industrial 3D printers (FDM, SLS, PolyJet, etc). The UM2 is an awesome machine, but we need to be honest in this conversation.
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edddy
13
Maintenance on Ultimaker is way easy, it’s open source so every details of the machine have access.
At the using, the open sources of the Ultimaker is also a benefit, third party apps can be used and the community is strong.
The Ultimaker2 have a weak point, the extruder. Not easy to feed/unfeed, not very powerful. But it can easily be replaced by a printed one.
An other low cost solution for you, you can buy a small CNC milling
I own an Ultimaker 2 and I love it. I had a steep learning curve with mine as it was the first 3D printer for me to own. It took me a couple months before I got mine operating smoothly but the support was amazing.
You can get reasonable predictable tolerances with these printers with some quality filament and taking some notes for each color. You are not going to get anything close to what a CNC or lathe could get you but you can often do what was already suggested and drill out holes or design custom support into your model. Modeling for 3D printing is different than modeling for machining because you need to account for printing limitations.
Feel free to send me a model of one you are having trouble with and I’d be glad to offer my opinions and print you a sample on my UM2 so you can see what the UM2 can do.
Best of luck on your quest and of course my vote is on the UM2 
marzvt
15
I have three Ultimaker 2 printers and I am ordering a 4th but I used my printers for end use parts production. The filament is varied and as cheap or expensive as you want it, and they are as reliable as you get in a home class printer. One of mine has worked around the clock for almost a year with only some clogged heads which were most likely may fault, as problems. The advantage the CubePro has which goes for any multi head printer is the ability to print support material. This allows you to sort out a design with out having to work out how to print best. This is best for prototypes and one off parts but is fart too cumbersome for anything more then that.
@chadkels I am an ultimaker fan boy (I have 2 UMOs) and think that you can get really good consistent output so that you will be sending less stuff out to the machine shop - but you would probably be sending the final versions out as there are always printer/user/plastic artefacts that means that the object is off - and the shrinkage depends on the design.
having said that i have heard that the cubepro (the latest version) is just plug and play - BECAUSE it is a closed ecosystem - i.e. their filament (with a new hot-end on each roll) and no tinkering.
So IMHO if you want NO tinkering I have heard that the top end cubepros are ok - the minute you might want to do something unusual you are into the Ultimakers. … if you really like getting onto understanding the machine - then the UMO is as accurate as the UM2 with a few more under the bonnet tricks.
edddy
17
multi head and support material is not a so good advantage, supports leave a trace, printing time is the twice, work on the print and maintenance is doubled
Thank you all for your excellent feedback. It seems as though the scales are tipping toward the UM2. I love hearing such definitive feedback. If anyone has more specifics on why the Cube Pro is bad, that would be awesome to hear as well! I really appreciate everyone taking the time to help me out with this. I am excited to become more involved with the 3D community. You all are fantastic people for such a warm welcome.
Luis
19
I have experience with both. Ultimaker. Two reasons. The software and hardware are open. You will incur more consumables cost with the Cube pro and you will feel limited with the Cube Pro software. Does the cube pro “print?” Yes. The mechanics are great, solid machine. But the firmware and software, evolved from the Bits from Bytes machine they purchased and re-badged, leaves much to be desired. I had the same troubles you hear from all printers. Stripped filament, plugged nozzles, and the last straw, a snapped z coupler. I thought about finding a broken one and replacing the electronics but that isn’t efficient. The big diecision maker for me was the razor and blades mentality of the drm-chipped filament spools. You could try anything but what they offer. Every other open-source printer allows YOU to decide what material you will use. The Ultmaker has a huge supportive community as well. My advice is to buy several Ultimakers and learn how to print. I know engineer friends that swear by carbon-fiber filament due to it’s low shrinkage and dimensional accuracy. That is a materials issue, not a printer issue. Are these level of printers like 100,000k printers? No, but you said you wanted the best quality for the money, right?
to see un-biassed discussion on the ultimakers - warts and all have a look at http://umforum.ultimaker.com/
I don’t think any print company is perfect, but UM comes close 
If I was going to buy another printer (I have 2 UMOs) it would be a UM2 or a Lulzbot TAZ (for all metal hot-end and regular printing of nylon and ninjaflex) (or another UMO) - and have just bought a shapeoko (the week it was discontinued!) to dip my toe into subtractive.
I have been a 3dhub for a year now and I don’t think there has been anything I could not print - you have to remember you are printing with a .4mm wide noodle - you can go down to .25 if you want thinner grain, but you are seriously bumping up your pritn time, and also go upwards (I use .65 a lot and am going to drill out a .8 and a 1mm for where you just want something in your hand in double quick time.)
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