Unique selling points of the Ultimaker2

[kai445 0]

Hi,

we are interested in purchasing an Ultimaker2. For our internal purchasing i need to justify the price compared to competitors.

I have found several printers that "seem" to offer the same features such as:

- http://www.mbot3d.com/products/mbot-grid-ii

- http://www.active3d.co.uk/active-x1-3d-printer/

- https://www.lpfrg.com/product/creatr/

- http://store.makerbot.com/replicator2

Since i assume that you know your competition much better, could you point out what the unique selling points of the Ultimaker2 are ?

Thank you !

 

[ian 32]

many !

The Ultimaker2 is....

- very accurate

- very quite

- very easy to use

- super software that gets updated every few weeks

- intuitative design

- easy to keep clean

- fantastic build quality and very durable

- super user forum to help you with anymore questions ;-)

I know there are a thousand other cool things about ultimaker.. but thats my quick list for now... :-)

Ian :-)

 

[skint 61]

Turn the lights off in the office... switch the UM2 bad boy on....watch their faces gleem with joy when it lights up and starts printing. This printer looks awesome.

LOL

 

[kai445 0]

I believe you when you say very accurate for example - however many of the printers i listed above list the same specs.

And while "looks awesome" is a good selling point it will not convince my boss

 

[Daid 297]

There are 2 aspects of any printer. One is hardware. Other is software.

As Ultimaker, we want quality for both. So our hardware is top of the line, getting high quality and speed. Software wise, it's awesome. And I'm not only saying that because I made the software.

Cura is tailored to work perfectly with the Ultimaker. While still exposing all the knobs&dials under the hood if you want to get there to tweak things. It gets a ready stream of updates, and you can actually talk with me about possible improvements and stuff.

 

- http://www.mbot3d.com/products/mbot-grid-ii

 

Do not know it. But hardware wise looks like a straight up copy of the Makerbot Replicator 2X.

Software wise, they just coped OpenSource ReplicatorG, which is old and dated compared to current standards.

Most likely invested a tiny bit in software to get their printer support better.

 

- http://www.active3d.co.uk/active-x1-3d-printer/

 

Also unknown to me. But hardware wise it looks like an Prusa i3. Nothing wrong with that, but the moving bed will impact quality a bit. Little other information available, most likely a 0.5mm nozzle instead of the 0.4 seen in higher end printers.

 

Software wise they are using Repetier-Host. Works, but not the friendliest package for most users, as it has lots of advanced features exposed by default. Do not invest in software development.

 

- http://store.makerbot.com/replicator2

 

The big competitor. I cannot make a proper assessment on them as I would be biased.

Software wise they are closed source now, and are not that keen on supporting their older products. And they just released new products.

We got one of the newer Replicators at the office last week. Didn't start up, so we have to send it back. And one my co-workers had an Replicator2 at his previous job, and it had lots of play in the axis causing ugly prints. However. That's just 2 samples, and I'm biased.

 

[tommyph1208 55]

Ultimaker keeps all their stuff open source (just released all design files for the um2), this mean larger community capaple of tweaking, adding to and improving the printer (just have a look in these forums under eg. "modifications and hacks" ), for a long foreseeable future... To me that is a great selling point in comparison to other more closed source manufacturers.

[Nicolinux 286]

Kei here is another idea. Take a look at the popular prints on http://thingiverse.com. You will often find that the most beautyful prints are done with an Ultimaker.

 

[ian 32]

ultimaker is simply a winning combination... amazing printers and one of the worlds best online communities :-)

 

[shurik 87]

I would make it simpler and, hopefully, fair.

Just try to post on other maker's forums, if you ever find them, and see if you receive such enthusiastic and warm replies en masse. 50% of the UM value is this forum. Unbeatable for me.

 

[braddock 1]

I'm just going to throw something out there. I'm very happy with my UM2 but no printer is absolutely trouble free. however, I'm happy to say that after a bit of tinkering, my UM2 now prints faultlessly, under extrusion is no longer an issue.

 

The UM2 in my mind is the best choice for consumer FFF printing for all the reasons mentioned above, however, what sort of models are you printing? for me, I'm a character artist, and most of my prints are organic with tons of overhangs and undercuts. Overhangs and undercuts are not handled all that well by FFF printing. It's acceptable and I get around it by cutting up models in certain ways and using supports when totally necessary, however, a DLP resin printer such as the form1 is probably better suited to this sort of work.

At the time, I didn't fully understand the difficulties in doing these types of prints on an FFF printer, and there's other draw backs to SLA and DLP such as expensive resins and fumes, but you really do need to consider what kind of models you're printing.

Respectively, there's many models handled better by FFF than DLP and I'll be hanging onto my UM2, but moving ahead, I'll be looking to add a DLP printer to my workbench.

 

[Daid 297]

- https://www.lpfrg.com/product/creatr/

 

I just noticed I forgot this one.

Never spoke to anyone who was happy about their Creatr, spoke to a bunch of people who where unhappy about it.

I feel kinda ashamed that they are dutch.

http://3dprinter4u.nl/ on the other hand, is also dutch, currently do not provide their own software solution. But, are good people with a good machine. So, if you want to go dutch, but for some reason do not want to go Ultimaker, then go Builder instead of Lpfrg. (Even if the they have a pretty lame URL)

 

[kai445 0]

Thank you all very much for your input !

I think i have enough info now, and hopefully can soon post questions about using the Ultimaker2