I have to say I’m not that impressed with what I’ve seen. The decision to go with two nozzles seems odd given that other manufacturers are looking more at single nozzles with multiple delivery systems and I’m concerned about the complexity of the lifting system (just one more thing to go wrong) and how effective it actually is. I’m also a little surprised they’re not full metal hot ends, and the emphasis on the 2.8mm size seems odd to me, like they know there’s an issue there and are forestalling complaints; it’s just an odd thing to put in a first release text.
On the price point, I have to compare it to the Prusa i3 Mk2. OK, that’s much more of a home user machine, but what does that really mean? The whole purpose of these things is to produce high quality prints reliably and if the Prusa can do that (and it sounds like it can), then why is the Ultimaker almost four times as expensive?
There is more to it than the two nozzles. Full metal can be added since the cores are easily swappable. Also the lifting mechanism has been tested for more than 10000 times (without any wear) according to Daid on the Ultimaker forums.
The wifi connectivity and the availability of the web-api on the printer makes it easy to use in a farm.
Check out the video below
And can you ship 1000 prusa i3’s Mk2 to a company and be sure they deliver thesame high quality? Ultimaker promises that, and that is why they are more expensive.
To be honest, @Rob_Leufkens, all that video says to me is that Ultimaker made a very poor job of planning and testing the machine. How did they get to production without properly testing the RFID reader? If they made that mistake, what others did they make?
As far as quality goes, I don’t know of any company that ships any product with the understanding that some of them might be poorly built and there’s absolutely no guarantee every single last one of the Ultimaker 3s will be perfect any more than any other printer.
As for order numbers, why should a product be more expensive simply because they can ship more of them? Surely prices should reduce with higher volume production, not increase, as it does with any other product. Not that I’m convinced they’re any more able to deliver a 1000 machine order than Prusa are; the video itself shows parts being printed, cleaned and assembled by hand, not an automated production line.
I get that there are going to be elements that mean this is a more expensive printer than the Prusa and that it’s probably more suitable for a farm/larger business, I do. But it’s four times more expensive, and that’s an awfully big hike.
I agree that it’s (too) expensive. I was doubting about buying the printer and selling my own. But the price is indeed too high.
As stated ,on the um forums, they started experimenting with the dual extrusion after the UM2 released and they wanted to get it right (which i believe they have done that now) all this time and investment in research needs to be covered. and that offcourse comes down to the consumer which buys the printer.
I think you can compare it to the mobile market. Apple produces quality products for a high price, but you can get a cheap phone that does promises to do thesame thing. People still buy the quality product because they are ensured that it will keep working properly. Samsung tries to deliver both, release high end phones (S7 series, except the note hahaha) and cheap (A5) phones.
The prusa looks indeed like a very good printer, and the price is good indeed but it’s not targeted to the same audience hence the price difference also
The base kit of the MK2 is cheap but you have to build it with all the problems that can lead to
You have to add an extra amount for the 4 feeder thing (which looks great i agree)
The MK2 is very opened so i guess (maybe i’m wrong) that ABS and such can be tricky
Not possible to print PVA!
No wifi connection/camera
And i really don’t agree with the one nozzle multiple extruder approach it’s very nice if you print the same material, but it’s impossible to print reliably different materials (and let’s not even talk about PVA).
So it’s not really comparable if you want my opinion
Side note if someone is really eager to have one UM3 soon i’ll have one in stock tomorrow
I know people who’ve made custom dual extruder set-ups for the UM original series, and I am sure it has been done for the UM2 as well. Go check out thw Ultimaker forums, I’m pretty sure there’ll be good documentation on the procedure.
Yes the 0.8mm nozzle is veing tested ATM and some smaller then 0.4 mm nozzles will be comming in for testing soon, ofcourse I have no idea what and when it will be released by marketing. The advantage over something cobbled together (there is a retrofit of a um core you can put your choise of nozzle size on, find it on the um forums) is that the machine will know the nozzle size and adjust accordingly (for instance during xy calibration) and notify cura of the size. Same goes for material type, that is also synced to cura and that is one of the advantages of RFID imho.
Ny Collogue just printed woodfill on the UM3 with the BB core as that lacks the flat bit inside the core, it flows a bit more easily it worked fine. (A BB core also oozes more easily, btw)
