Has any one used a Form 1 printer? Or has anyone seen the output quality from one of thes Optical printers?
Heres a link to there site.
http://formlabs.com/products/our-printer
What do you think? Better out put for the price/$ ?
I haven’t used one yet, but I have seen a lot of references to this one:
https://store.afinia.com/Afinia-H-Series-3D-Printer_p_8.html
I also noticed that it is now available at Radio Shack: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=23160006
I suspect that a lot of these are Buy NOW! (Before the price goes down) 
I don’t have specific info on those, but I do NOT recommend the Makerbot. We had one at the office and our EE PE couldn’t make it work well. (His specialty is boards and programming). If course quality and not good repeatability are ok, then go for it.
Bob C.
It is amazing to see all of the printers that are available.
Amazon has quite the list that should serve as a good starting point for those that are looking: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Industrial-Scientific-3D-Printers/zgbs/industrial/6066127011
And there’s a nice list here as well: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-3d-printers,news-17552.html
It will be interesting to see what next year brings.
Me, I’m sure tempted…
Thr Afinia gets lots of good reviews.
Bob McCown said:
Thr Afinia gets lots of good reviews.
Yes, it looks pretty nice, and is also available at Best Buy!
However, I wonder if it’s not better to just buy El Cheapo to start with so you can get to learn how to make something first. I mean it seems like there’s something new every year and the price keeps getting more reasonable.
Lots of suggestions here: http://3dprinters.ws/
This one looks interesting on the “cheaper” side: http://pirate3d.com/buccaneer - But I really have to wonder about something sold from “Pirate” - and it’s also not available yet! Seems like lots have come from the Kickstarter arena - I have to question how many will be here next year at this time.
Id be worried about resolution or build issues with the cheap ones, not make any good progress, and get frustrated.
Dave,
I have seen a similar dlp printer and didn’t like the resin part. The resin costs about $90 a liter and you need to change it ever couple of months. That get expensive. When I get back home, I’ll post a photo of some parts that I have.
The Afina is a OK printer but as far as I know you cannot print ABS with it. From what I’ve been told the Afina uses its own software and not open source like most of the others.
Bob
You are the thrid person that has trouble with the Makerbot that I know. A friend of mine has one and was only getting a good print about 20% of the time. I spent about 5 hours calibrating it and now it prints all the time. This is one of the reasons I tell everybody thats wants a printer to build one first. You learn so much about it as you build it and know how to make adjustments and calibrate it.
Bob McCown said:
Id be worried about resolution or build issues with the cheap ones, not make any good progress, and get frustrated.
Bob
You are right. Kansas City has the thrid largest printers per capita and I’ve seen several printers not being finished because of frustration. At the local Maker group, there is over 40 members there with printer that were home built.
I have found that the resolution is a key factor in making parts in our respective scales. even with the best comercial units you can get some stair step effects, but these are genrally minimized with the correct build direction. So far i have stuck with the service bueros for the parts i have had made, which have subsequently been used to make rubber molds for spin casting. this prosess usually consumes the printed part master due to the ability to get it out of the mold in one piece after, but leaves good quality impresions for casting. i will try to post some examples in the next couple of days.
Al P.
Al - My investigation found similar when using the SLA part as a master. For going in the direction of a master for spin casting, I was going to do an SLA in a resin designed as a ‘wax’. Then have one/multiple brass patterns cast for the spin molds. This would allow for as many spin molds as you care to make without degradation of the master pattern. A bit more expensive up front, but would only require doing it one time.
Bob C.
Went up and did some more perusing around the Form1 website, Made for some interesting research.
This is from their promo pictures:
(http://i1234.photobucket.com/albums/ff403/dave2-8-0/FDM_SL_zps69b27cb3.jpg)
The smoothness of the print is really apparent. I Know that the one on the left would never come out of a mold!
Here’s a 3D DLP printer my son is working on.
(http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/docwatsonnc/3D Printer.JPG)
You can see the DLP projector mounted under the table. Currently he is testing several liquid resins. The image is created projecting a UV beam into the resin.
Here are a couple of the items he has printed during testing.
(http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/docwatsonnc/Image-1.JPG)
(http://freightsheds.largescalecentral.com/users/docwatsonnc/Image-2.JPG)
He has also built his own plastic wire printer. His future plan is to replace the DLP with a laser.
Of course, I plan to use his talents for my scratchbuilding projects. It also helps that he is a self-employed professional 3D commercial artist.
Doc