At what price point do 3d printers transition from junk to something usable?

[wilhe_jo]

Well, that's only half the story. You will buy some cheaper (or in my case, locally sourced) filaments, and you're again fiddling around with some values. That's not quick/easy!

So your argument against the Prusas is that you wouldn't buy good filament if you bought a Prusa. What.

So there are definitly good alternatives for the i3... the Lulzbot ones are also open-source as the Prusa ones!
maybe it was just the i3 Mk3 launch making people just blindly running after these...

I never said there weren't. I just happen to be somewhat familiar with the Prusa machines. .. and no, I'm not some fanboy with a garage full of them. I own 0.

No, I mend all that easiness is going away if you use filament other than the "supported".
From my experience, +-5° Extruder-Temp, +-5% Filament Diameter, +-20mm/s Print Speed matters a lot!

And the filament is only 1 part of the equation.

e.g. If I've a Print where I have long straight lines to print, I tend to go a little hotter.
For Prints with loads of small sections I increase the fan speed... which is the #1 noise source... so I tend to slow it down as much as i can.

In the end, I get really nice prints, but I would not call 100% first time right. Which matches the observations of ar__systems...

73

[Monkeh]

Well, that's only half the story. You will buy some cheaper (or in my case, locally sourced) filaments, and you're again fiddling around with some values. That's not quick/easy!

So your argument against the Prusas is that you wouldn't buy good filament if you bought a Prusa. What.

So there are definitly good alternatives for the i3... the Lulzbot ones are also open-source as the Prusa ones!
maybe it was just the i3 Mk3 launch making people just blindly running after these...

I never said there weren't. I just happen to be somewhat familiar with the Prusa machines. .. and no, I'm not some fanboy with a garage full of them. I own 0.

No, I mend all that easiness is going away if you use filament other than the "supported".

Garbage in, garbage out. Not every filament can be tested and not every manufacturer even produces consistent filament.

So.. if you buy a decent printer, and you don't feed it crap, it pretty much works fine out of the box. And it can be done for under 1000 £, $, €, which is the 'magic price' some people have pulled out of their arses in this thread. I use Prusa as an example because I know what their prices are. What's the price of something else which works? No idea, I'm not in the market for them. I'm just hung up on facts I happen to have on hand..

[hagster]

My colour multifunction laser printer with duplex print, duplex scan, doc feeder, wifi and touchscreen is absolutely amazing and only cast £200 shipped next day.

3d printers are orders of magnitude less sophisticated. As such it is perfectly possible to have cheap and good machines. The only reason EU and US manufacturers can not sell them cheaply is scale.

[wilhe_jo]

There's prusa makerbot and lulzbot... i think the west countries are okay...

The price difference to laser printers has to do with different volumes... Just compare your Toner Volume per sheet to and the volume on a filament role. And dont forget the 3rd dimension....
To be honest, slicers and firmwares are already pretty sophisticated. And you need to compare it to monochrome printers....and take care of the refill prices....

I dont really  buy crap filaments, but i have like 10 spools of different colors and plastics. And even in Austria are local filament companies. Its like cnc milling.... You get ok results from ball-park feeds and feeds, to get good results you need loads of experience with your tooling.

Btw my hbot was like 500eur +some meters of filaments for a cooling shroud.... But I had to learn about my slicer (Ideamaker) the "hard" way.

73