Matt@RFR
Titanium
- Joined
- May 26, 2004
- Location
- Paradise, Ca
I bought a $300 Monoprice Maker Select (basically a toy) to prototype a product and thinking I might play around with it a little bit. I'll be damned if I'm not using the thing every other day to make actually useful things for the shop! Desk organizers, brackets for washdown hoses, hangers for air guns, work stops for the vision system, jigs for assembly work, just all kinds of things that help our productivity.
I'm looking for a better quality, larger printer now. Budget is around $1500 or so. I'm wanting to use from .6mm to 1.2mm nozzles because I like my stuff to be clean looking and fairly accurate, but I'm not making artsy type things. And I'm getting pretty tired of 30+ hour prints.
The goal is to buy a printer that works as-is. I don't want another hobby, I just want a tool that works. I had Tiny Machines quote me a custom CR-10 V2 Pro, and to reliably print with the bigger nozzles, it was going to be about $1000. So they recommended a Formbot Raptor 2.0, which looks like a great machine on paper, geared more toward pro-am type users like me. BUT, it has very little information on it online, no real reviews, no communities, and nobody talking about them on forums, which scares me a little.
Any advise on the Formbot machine? Or any suggestions for another machine? I think I can get away with 300 x 300mm, but the 400mm beds look very handy.
Here's the desk organizer I made for the vision system desk and a couple work stops:
EDIT: Thought I'd add a picture of the cutter-of-guaranteed-death I printed to prototype some thick rubber doughnut shaped parts. The look on people's faces was way more fun than actually using it:
I'm looking for a better quality, larger printer now. Budget is around $1500 or so. I'm wanting to use from .6mm to 1.2mm nozzles because I like my stuff to be clean looking and fairly accurate, but I'm not making artsy type things. And I'm getting pretty tired of 30+ hour prints.
The goal is to buy a printer that works as-is. I don't want another hobby, I just want a tool that works. I had Tiny Machines quote me a custom CR-10 V2 Pro, and to reliably print with the bigger nozzles, it was going to be about $1000. So they recommended a Formbot Raptor 2.0, which looks like a great machine on paper, geared more toward pro-am type users like me. BUT, it has very little information on it online, no real reviews, no communities, and nobody talking about them on forums, which scares me a little.
Any advise on the Formbot machine? Or any suggestions for another machine? I think I can get away with 300 x 300mm, but the 400mm beds look very handy.
Here's the desk organizer I made for the vision system desk and a couple work stops:
EDIT: Thought I'd add a picture of the cutter-of-guaranteed-death I printed to prototype some thick rubber doughnut shaped parts. The look on people's faces was way more fun than actually using it:
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