Lets say you were given 10K to spend on printers.....

Hi Guys,

I'm joining a new company and there is talk of allocated a budget of around 10,000 euro for printers. We will be doing some in house manufacturing of some interior parts for some consumer electronics and I think 3-4 printer would be the right number. I myself have always had Rep raps, but for such an investment I am on the fence as to weather we should go with a of the shelf machine as reliability is very important as these machines will be running 24/7. I'm really interested to hear your thoughts as to what machines you guys would suggest?

The requirements are as follows.
-Must print small medium parts in ABS/PLA (150x150x100) reliably
-Run 24/7
-Can be self-assembled / pre-assembled
-for one printer I am looking for a printer which can make PCBs (pcb mill/pcb laser etching)
I'd also be interested in a SLA/DLP machine suggestion. (please don't mention formlabs)

Thanks!!!

Lets take 10K as the maximum. A good figure would be around 5 !

I would do a mix if I were me. Maybe a standard format 200x200x200 printer, a large format printer 300^3 or so, a delta for tall prints, and another that might be dual or tri purpose for the PCB's etc.

Unless of course you already have the parts in mind and just want to crank out the same parts over and over. In that case you probably want most of the machines to be the same. For long term reliability I would say Lulzbot, ultimaker, makergear, and mendelmax. I'm sure there are plenty of others. I haven't been actively looking at the market for a few years so I'm a bit dated in my familiarity with manufacturers. I've seen printer farms announced recently using makerbot, Ultimaker and Type A machines. Makerbot seems to have had some issues with extruder reliability in the past. I'm not sure how well they have resolved that issue.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2016 03:58PM by bryanandaimee.

I think a standard 200mm axis printer will be enough as I've been printing parts for this company for a while and I haven't had to print any thing outside of that envelope. I've been looking at the new Wanho duplicator i3 plus. It's a lot of machine for the money and even after buying 5 of them, there is a lot of meet left on the bone for a good machine for making PCBs. Do you know of any machines that have a pick do pick and place/pcb milling?

Calling the_digital_dentist!

If you are making products, a mix of tools would be the best, with a mill/lathe you could make all the 3D printers you wanted.