What is a one top question asked of anyone actively participating in the 3D printing communities online and in-person? What 3D printer should I get? Which one is the best, which is the good value if I have x dollars? Which one do I need if I'm worried about surface finish or working with flexible materials or a whole shopping list of features and capabilities? I've spent significant time testing and reviewing desktop 3D printer models of the past few years, and I'd like to offer but one suggestion that I can share with you with total confidence. Select a machine within your budget that matches your needs. Most of those who have asked me for advice for purchasing printers in the past, haven't worked out either the budget or the key features that they need to prioritize. They also haven't considered the risk that the cost of materials and maintenance can transform a discounted machine into a money pit. Until you work out both sides of that equation, you will have a hard time limiting the wide field of options down to those that suit both your budget and your needs. Digital fabrication specialists and design professor, Arthur Young Spivey, when asked to advise institutions looking to invest in 3D printer clusters, once boiled his advice down to a single question as well. What company will service this machine in five-years time? It took me a couple of years and a couple of machines I can no longer upgrade or repair to learn the value of the hidden wisdom in that question. Are you still thinking, okay, thanks but what 3D printer model should I get? I'm not going to make a specific recommendation. I revealed clearly enough my own personal favorite by joining the company where I now work. Like anything new, you start with no experience, and the desktop 3D printing experience takes some getting used to. Luckily, nothing about this technology requires the steep learning curve or the skilled operator for CNC or welding, where they are mandatory requirements for instruction and safety principles before you should even be permitted to touch a machine. I would strongly suggest that you look to gain access to some 3D printers for free. Start your investigation with some experience under your belt, before you consider evaluating any models for purchase. In a previous lecture, I shared a number of ways you might locate and get access to a desktop 3D printer local to you. Rather than rehearse the whole of this, I just want to highlight the three I always suggest for those serious about a purchase, a chance to have a conversation with actual end-users before you start talking to sales agents. Classes of printers. This type of list is constantly under dispute and reordering. But based on my experience, I divide the category of desktop 3D printer classes into this list. Budget printers. The race to the bottom within consumer facing 3D printing has produced some real dogs, but also a few gems, like the mono price worth looking at for certain kinds of uses. These tend to be used until it fail, but have very few service and maintenance options. Tinker class. The Tinker class are the machines that have user access and modification as a central focus. This is where the entire desktop categories started, right here with DIY Maker Machines. There continued to be interesting options here for those who are focused on learning about the technology, or who have a specific focus on solving an unusual materials or Machine Control challenge. Workhorse. This is the center of the bell curve, where most of the desktop units are located. They vary wildly as far as value for money, but they are also the most likely to be extensively reviewed by consumers and technology journalists online. Professional desktop. The premium end of desktop technology. This is where I live on a day-to-day basis, largely because Professional desktop now can match punch for punch what many of the industrial machines offer at a fraction of the price point. Benchtop 3D printer, medium format. What began as a slow expansion outwards and up, taking advantage of machine designs that can happily accommodate longer runs in the x y or z direction or longer more broadly distributed towers for deltas, has now become a lively and thriving category evolving out of desktop technology. Whether the trigger point for benchtop comes down to 12 to 20 inches in build volume on the x y or z or not, probably has more to do with the overall footprint of the entire machine. Because this class is largely filtered by size instead of quality, considering a wide comparison of these machines you may see clusters of prices that capabilities matching that the Budget, Tinker, Workhorse, Professional, Paradigm, all within this category. Large format. I'd argue that a number of the recent affordably priced large format printers are closer cousins to desktop than industrial, and in a complimentary way, drawing on cutting edge agile hardware and software development strategies, and more contemporary understandings of UI UX. Machines such as Re3Ds, Gigabyte, the 3D platform and the German Big Red Machines are very capable machines, when you have a project that's well suited to them. Print some furniture or the front-facing of a project car or motorcycle. Industrial. This probably doesn't belong in this grouping, but as you climb above 5K to 10K for desktop unit, or 15K to 20K for large format unit, you're probably looking at industrial machines with industrial machine pricing. There are amazing machines in the industrial AM sector, but that is out of scope for my list, and the price expectations of most of my learners. Well, certainly a budget is a budget, and if you only have so much to draw on the list of possible Machines to consider can dwindle considerably. But before you commit yourself to purchase on price point alone, take a moment to consider the economics of printer ownership. It may sound counter-intuitive, but if you are aiming to accomplish real work with your equipment, making a cheapest printer purchase now can be more expensive in the medium to long-term, than committing yourself to a more expensive but more capable Machine and vendor now. Consider a few factors here. First, there is the initial outlay for the machine, the price you need to pay for the equipment now. While a short-term investment in a low cost printer is a lower hurdle a step-over, what if you decide you want to switch vendors or upgrade to a more capable machine in a year? 3D printers don't retain anything of the monetary value of a car or home, and they probably depreciate more quickly than computer equipment. But if you want to have the most options down the road to switched to whatever equipment meet your needs, consider checking prices on eBay and similar for used units for the items you want to buy now. So at the end of the day, getting a better sense of your needs now and investing in the option that really meets those needs and has capabilities you can grow into, can cost you less than a series of machine purchases as you work your way till the best machine for you. Even if you don't want to switch, will the model that you selected still be made and serviced? Remember the Arthur Young Spivey quote from before, "What company will still service this machine in five years time?" The number of vendors who meet this gut check question dwindles more and more every day. But predicting which manufacturer will survive, and which will not isn't as hard as you think. The manufacturers and resellers who take customer and technical sport seriously and provide routes for the customers to continue to get the help and resources they need, are the ones that are most likely to survive, and at the very least are the best experiences for the customer. If there is a third-party ecosystem offering mods, accessories, and repair parts, that's an even healthier side. Do yourself a favor and audit the customer and technical support services, and take a look at the warranty and extended warranty options, and remind yourself that you're getting equipment that you're going to clock a lot of time using over the next year. Speaking of service, find out what the track record of model has for service requirements over time. Are there preventative maintenance tips you can pick up now? You can learn a lot but finding out what elements of a design experienced the greatest wear and tear, especially if you're also discovering ways that the manufacturer or third party services have solutions to address those elements. There will always be some budgetary needs for maintenance on a 3D printer. How much budgetary requirements depend on the machine purchased, and it's reliability. Guess what, manufacturers and user communities who have good preventative maintenance strategies are those who expect the equipment to be of value to customers for a longer period of time, than those whose long-term maintenance recommendation is, well, buy another one next year. Speaking of which another obvious critical factor in the total cost of your printer experience, are the materials you can use and consumables you will have spent in the course of use. Machines that are capable of handling a broader range of materials also give you the opportunity to select from a broader range of material vendors. Consider the high cost of proprietary materials, offered for the industrial machines versus the open market for materials that most desktop 3D printers enjoy today. You want to select a premium filled-in, because you want to and feel that the value you get out of it is worth it. You don't want to be trapped into just a small handful of options, with no opportunity to shop around. There isn't a clear recipe for how to resolve which machine might be the best one for your needs. But luckily, there are many resources to help you approach this decision with as much information as you can get. If you're looking for the latest hard data and print quality tests, just the facts ma'am, there are a number of online review sites that have taken a long careful look at what customers need from desktop 3D printers. I, myself, participate in the Make Magazine annual digital fabrication reviews for number of years and appreciate the fact that each year this team makes an effort to share not only its findings, but how to approach the process of testing and evaluating the printers. I can also recommend the channel tested on YouTube for a similar reason. They take their time and offer careful evaluation, rather than jumping to a hasty conclusion.
