That said, I have seen some really excellent prints coming out of i3 printers.
In the hands of the proper person, almost any printer that allows for tweaking can produce excellent prints. Be careful when making judgement on that.
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StephanK 30
I own a Original Prusa i3 MK2 and an Ultimaker 2+. With respect of the print quality of the final print, there isn't much difference. Considering the kit is 750,00 Euros vs. the 2.150,00 Euros for a UM2+, this is quite remarkable. If you're on a tight budget and do not mind getting your hands dirty, go for the Prusa. Get 2 even.
You mention speed, my UM2+ is way faster than the Prusa, I've never done anything to try and tweak the Prusa, it is basically using all defaults, so this might not be a fair comparison - but then again, I never changed defaults on my UM2+ either. I use Simplify3D for both them, as I neither like Slic3R nor Cura. (Perhaps I could start tweaking acceleration / motion settings on both, but quite honestly, I don't care enough)
Why I prefer the UM2+ over the Prusa?
Well, lets put it this way: I spent hours fidgeting with the Prusa getting the frame straight in the first place. That's what you expect when buying a kit. I didn't expect the following. In the 5 months I owned my Prusa, this is in short what I've run into:
- I had to stop printing during the night and at dinner time because this thing made one hell of noise (despite sitting in the basement) and my wife wasn't best pleased.
- I kept going back securing nuts with LocTite cause I got tired of re-tightening them (i think they came lose with the vibration introduced with crappy failing bearings).
- Redo the wire harness because it was dragging across the bed or catching on the electronics box
- In the end I had to replace all bearings and rods on the MK2 (supposedly, Prusa switched to better quality bearings and proper rods with the MK2S - time will tell)
- both fans failed, one because of a broken bearing, the other one with a broken wire somewhere down the wire harness - the constant bending and moving seems to eat wires alive. There will be more failures, I am certain.
- I still have unresolved issues with the Feeder, it doesn't load/unload filament properly. The brass hobbed bolt is already showing signs of wear, the inner parts are quite chewed up. I should replace it it now, but I am still hoping that my Multi-Material upgrade will eventually get delivered before this fails completely.
Contrast this with my UM2+ that I've owned well over a year now:
- when i got my UM2+, i noticed that all pulleys were lose and had to be tightened.
That's it. I guess eventually i will have to replace the PTFE coupler. ATM it is still hanging in nicely.
The frame design of the i3 doesn't feel terribly sturdy. I think it's wobbly even. And I am not sure why this doesn't affect print quality more than it does. Either way, I prefer the semi enclosed UM2+. I added a door and hood for it, done. For the i3 i had to build a full box around it, taking up precious desk space. I could fit 2 UMs in the space where the Prusa is.
I am not sure whats going on with Prusa, but spare parts availability is not great. I bought spare parts, and despite them being as listed "in Stock" when i prepaid for them, it took them 2 weeks to ship them out (4 parts can only be bought from Prusa: Sensor, bed, hobbed bolt & PEI sheets - good luck finding all them in stock at the same time). So, the printer was out cold for 2 weeks in 5 months, plus downtime when the fans failed or swapping the bearings. The main reason why I bought the Prusa was the Multi-Material Upgrade kit. Don't get me started on that one ;-)
Some days it felt like I've been messing with my Prusa more than I was printing with it. My UM2+ just works. If you want a new hobby: "fussing with a 3D printer", get the Prusa, you'll love it, it prints great!. If you want a tool that gets a job done reliably and you do not mind the hefty price tag, get the UM2+.
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jonatanrullman 17
This seems like a rather odd question in many ways, as StephanK was on about.
The prusa is about €750, much less for the really cheap clones and still substantially less for the pretty good clones. An UM2+ used is at least €1200, new they are more than €2000. An UM3 clocks in at about €3600. We're not talking apples and oranges here.
Reminds me of The Big Bang Theory. It's a little wrong to call a tomato a vegetable, it's very wrong to call it a suspension bridge.
Sure, both are 3D printers but even if we suppose that an i3 could compete with an Ultimaker, it's still a pretty big price span to look at.
That said, I have seen some really excellent prints coming out of i3 printers. But it does come at a price. Or rather, it doesn't. As you have noticed, an i3s aren't plug and play. They are good but more of a tinkering model, as Stephan noted. And if I may voice an unpopular opinion, the hot end leaves quite a bit to be desired, even if we only focus on print quality.
Now, an Ultimaker on the other hand, is a well honed precision instrument. I found it hard to really understand the difference it made before I got one and sure there are a few bad points too, quite apart from the hefty price tag. Especially if you get en UM2 as I did, the 2+ made things better.
So an Ultimaker will require a slight bit of tinkering as well. And the bowden system instead of direct drive does come with certain drawbacks.
However, there are so many points in favour. I don't have time to list them all but a few:
*I doubt very much that you will be able to get close to the print speeds the UM2 does on a Prusa no matter what simplify tells you.
*The hot swap nozzle feature of the Olsson block is pure gold. I can't do without it anymore, no way.
*It is fairly quiet for a 3D printer.
*It looks great.
*Print quality is ridiculous.
*Cura has predefined profiles, just pick one, do a few minor adjustments and it will work excellent if you don't have time to go into the deep end. Haven't tried Simplify yet but I hear it is great.
To follow Stephans excellent list. This is what I have done to my UM2. Many of these things are upgrades that came with the UM2+ already so keep that in mind.
*Fan was pretty loud so I replaced it with a much quieter.
*Led strip worthless, replaced with new.
*Trimmed the PTFE coupler after a few hundred print hours because of slight deformation.
*Have bought I2K spacer but not mounted yet.
*New fan shroud (Labern)
*Geared feeder (Meduza)
*New extruder and drive gear (IRobertI)
*Leveling feet
*A spacer for screws because they were 3mm too long and interfered with the new fan shroud
*Olsson block (mine came with it actually, but many don't)
*New spool holder
Basically all of these were upgrades I made to make it work even better, some more important than others. Only actual repair I did was the PTFE coupler. But it basically worked wonderfully straight out of the box. Literally. Even though it was second hand.
You won't be able to use 1.75mm filament without some serious modifications. I will do it eventually because my filament supplier tells me he will be phasing out 3mm filament over time and tightly wound coils when spools are almost empty create a bit of trouble. But it will cost about €100-150 or so. Good news is that if you decided to go with a cheaper used UM2 instead of a 2+ and you didn't get the olsson block, that €150 upgrade would also get you that.
To summarise my thinking here. If you have say €1200-2500 lying around and want the best printer that money can give, buy an UM2 or UM2+, used or new depending on availability and preference. If you have €3600 lying around and want something even better, I think it will be hard to beat an UM3, although I would take my time and check out the competition that is in that price range as well. But I doubt there is any serious alternative.
If you feel that the prices above are more than you would actually want to spend on printing, give it some serious thought if you should instead invest the time in getting the Prusa as good as it can be.
Cheers
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photoholic 2
Well... I don't even own an Ultimaker but already love one thing: The community. Thank you so much guys for the great help and your time... I'm really grateful and it does help me quite a lot.
I guess I will keep the Prusa to fiddle around a little bit during cold winter nights and probably go for an UM2 Extended+ for serious work...
Greetings and many thanks again
John
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SandervG 1,521
Not a lot I can add to this I think, except one thought I had about the proposed printing times in S3D. It may give you some estimation of how fast a printhead can move around, but you can only know how realistic this is if you have also seen and compared the print quality this generated. Or even if you pushed beyond these estimations to see if it indeed is the limit.
I don't own a prusa so I can't really draw the comparison but obviously I agree with the reliability of Ultimaker. And even more with the kuddo's to this amazing community
Hopefully you feel welcome here, even when you don't have your Ultimaker 2 Extended+ yet and continue fiddling with your Prusa. ![:)](//content.invisioncic.com/ultimake/emoticons/5a33abdf6d109_1f60acopy.png)
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