iMakr – successful young retail franchise and multi-faceted 3D printing service provision outlet – has added a number of prosumer favourites to its 3D printer sales range. The printers include the increasingly successful, highly rated Zortrax M200 and the popular B9Creator. iMakr has also announced that it will also be stopping sales of the new MakerBot range, further to negative customer feedback, in what some analysts may consider a surprise move. iMakr continues to retail the MakerBot Replicator 2X.
Keeping up to pace with the latest 3D printer releases is almost full time job in itself. Picking the best of the bunch can be even harder: here, resources such as 3DPI are pragmatic.
Zortrax has caused a bit of a stir with its entry into the prosumer 3D printer price level that resides between the ‘MakerBot’ strata and the sub-$500 entry-level ‘Micro3D’ marker*. The Zortrax M200 also resides at number 7 in the top quality** ratings in the October 2014 3D Hubs analytics report, second only to FormLabs Form1 for quality of a crowdfunded printer — the M200 sits behind only the Form1 & Afinia’s H480 for quality and is only bettered by professional printers that are far more expensive: Dimension 1200, ZCorp, and Project 660. The Institute of Industrial Design in Poland recently compiled a ‘25 Best Polish Industrial Designs’ list, Zortrax garnererd a place in that precedence.
The M200 has a best print resolution of 25 – 5 microns, a build volume of 200 x 200 x 185 mm, maximum extrusion temperature of 110oC (230oF) and a heated build plate temperature of 380oC (716oF). iMakr retails the 3D printer for £1,549 ($2463.39) with a one week dispatch date and one year guarentee. The M200 is available from Zortrax directly for 1,595.00€ (£1247.13, $1991.59).
iMakr becomes the twentieth reseller of Zortrax printers***. However, the iMakr deal is likely eclipsed by fulfillment of the breakthrough Zortrax $10million distribution deal for five thousand printers made with tech giant DELL earlier this year. The Zortrax M200 will be displayed at the iMakr pop-up at Le Bon Marche Rive Gauche in Paris – where it will debut the Scandles Range from the fifteenth of November.
B9Creator has created what is now, possibly, the second most popular desktop resin-based prosumer 3D printer after the Form1. The DLP printer also features highly in terms of customer based print quality ratings in the afforementioned and increasingly defining 3D Hubs report. The printer gains 4.5 / 5 stars at THRE3D, though based on just three reviews.
The B9Creator V1.2 has a best print resolution of 30 microns, a variable build volume based upon resolution and dimensions for the printer itself of 55.88 x 50.8 x 33.02 cm (22″ x 20″ x 13″) with a full body length of 55.88 cm (22″) and girth of 33.02 cm (66”).
B9Creator ships the printer to outside of the U.S. themselves for $6,215.40 — encompassing the assembled price of $5495, shipping, insurance & handling of $260, and a transaction fee of 8% — which is £3909.65, excluding import duty charges. iMakr retails the 3D printer for £3,999, making this a good deal. The self-assembly kit for the B9Creator V1.2 retails directly from B9Creator at $2,999.
Comparable DLP printers include the Stalactite 102 for $3,500, Trimaker Beta for $3,800, and Portobello 3D Printer for $3,900. There is a skip up in price from these machines to the Freeform Pico at $7,000, Robot Factory’s 3DLPrinter at $7,833. The next price increment is to professional level DLP printers, which begin at $16,520 for the EnvisionTEC Perfactory Micro.
Cheaper DLP printers are exampled by the mUVe 1 DLP, New Uncia and NOVA 3D Printer at $999, Sedgewick DLP Printer V2.0 at $1,595, Kudo3D Titan 1 DLP at $1,899 and M-One at $2,100. A comparably priced alternative light-based 3D printer would be a stereolithographic (SLA) printer exampled by such as the Pegasus Touch Printer for $3349.
The two further new additions to iMakr’s catalogue are the Ultimaker Original+, which features the highly popular first Ultimaker printer with the addition of a heated build platform for £1,199 ($1913.89); and the Printrbot Assembled Simple Metal, with its high print quality for price output, metal body and auto-levelling bed for £499 ($796.16).
You can find the full archive of 3DPI articles by subject by following the following links: iMakr, Zortrax, B9Creator, PrintrBot, Ultimaker.
*M3D gained real international recognition for the preassembled sub-$500 domain 3D printer with the immensely popular multi-million dollar crowdfunding for their Micro3D Printer. M3D may soon rest the lead from Printrbot as the defining cheap entry-level pre-assembled 3D printer, Printrbotthemselves having superceded the still-successful Solidoodle.
The ‘classically popular’ printers: the MakerBot 2 ($2,199) and Ultimaker 2 ($2,500) encapsulate a defined marker for market, pricing / quality strata as prosumer ‘desktop factory’ printers / entry-level professional prototyping printers. This niche resides between entry-level cheap printers (sub-$500 ‘entry-level’ and $500 – $2000 ‘cheap prosumer’) and the cheapest industrial prototyping printers.
**To quote 3DPI’s Mike regarding the 3D Hubs voted quality list: “It should be noted that each printer received a different number of reviews and that the H-Series only had 18 reviews, compared to the Projet 660′s 28 and the Rep 2′s 846. As the machines are used more regularly over a longer period of time, the distribution should be more accurately weighted.”
***The first nineteen being: 3D Printer Gear; Machines-3D; Ningbo FLD-TECH Co. Ltd.; Elyazalée; 3D-Drucker Online-Shop; ShareMind; MyInvent Enterprise; Grupo XDS; Ridix 3D Printing; Middelthon Innovasjon ENK; Materialination; Get3D; Bardins; 3D Solutions; ADATEX, s.r.o.; ERTIS CENTER Simon Srpčič s.p.; JnC Solution Co., Ltd.; TEKNODIZAYN; and 3D Proshare.
