I am looking at your machines now. I can't seem to understannd why your smaller machine is $3500 and the slightly larger one with manual laser scan is $69,000. Its not like the laser scan is controlling the machine, and adjusting printing in real time.
20x price change. If I just want to print in Onyx material, there seems to be no point in the more expensive machine. The carbon filament printing is cool, and I may step up to the $13,000 machine. I just wish someone could justify the big machine - or in reality I wish it was actually significantly bigger. Double each dimension, so 6x the build volume of the small machine. It is using linear guides, it is easy to purchase them in any size needed.
The pricing seems to be arbitrarily aimed at maximum cash extraction from the customer, not reality. I will probably end up with the cheaper machine. I am looking for a way to print parts I would normally machine from aluminum.
It is a well built machine, however. It makes very very nice out of the box prints too. Retail quality, probably the first machine that I have seen using filaments that can do that (in the pro-sumer price range, excluding big dollar machines). It will be machines like this one with good parts inside (slides, bearings, servos) that will make 3D printing really useful.
At the tradeshow I saw the machine at (SEMASHOW) , the side by side comparison to the machined aluminum parts was quite impressive. The part felt like half the weight, and had really nice surface finish.
If what you need is a regular FDM machine our $3500 printer is a really, really fantastic one. It's the least hassle and has the best out of the box prints out of any desktop 3D printer I've used.
If you're looking to print aluminum replacement parts, you should look at the higher end machines. They have the ability to print continuous composites (our homegrown, weird, and very powerful 3D printing technology) which will let you print parts which are strength/stiffness competitive with Aluminum.
While our $69,000 printer definitely has an enterprise price-tag, it's still the cheapest (on an amortized cost basis) way of getting strong parts with a 24hr or less turnaround. The purpose of the laser scanner is to close the loop on what is typically an open-loop system in essentially all other 3D printers. I can't say too much more about this but we're adding a lot of cool features all the time.
(Obvious Disclaimer: I'm trying to sell you on the printers we make because I believe they are the best)
So why doesn't the big machine actually print something larger? I have a Haas Mini Mill, which has a 16x12x10 inch work volume, and that is small a lot of times.
I would buy the $69000 version in a heartbeat (we are a manufacturing company) if it would print a 12x12x12 inch size or a little larger
On the Mark X (69k version) our build volume is almost exactly 13x10x8 inches (we round down slightly when we list dimensions on our website).
If you want I can put you in touch with someone who can help you figure out if your use cases will fit our printer. Send me a note if you're interested: abe@markforged.com
20x price change. If I just want to print in Onyx material, there seems to be no point in the more expensive machine. The carbon filament printing is cool, and I may step up to the $13,000 machine. I just wish someone could justify the big machine - or in reality I wish it was actually significantly bigger. Double each dimension, so 6x the build volume of the small machine. It is using linear guides, it is easy to purchase them in any size needed.
The pricing seems to be arbitrarily aimed at maximum cash extraction from the customer, not reality. I will probably end up with the cheaper machine. I am looking for a way to print parts I would normally machine from aluminum.
It is a well built machine, however. It makes very very nice out of the box prints too. Retail quality, probably the first machine that I have seen using filaments that can do that (in the pro-sumer price range, excluding big dollar machines). It will be machines like this one with good parts inside (slides, bearings, servos) that will make 3D printing really useful.
At the tradeshow I saw the machine at (SEMASHOW) , the side by side comparison to the machined aluminum parts was quite impressive. The part felt like half the weight, and had really nice surface finish.