Hey Tech. Not Sure How Big Of A Hurry You Are In But You May Want To Look At The Solidoodle Press. They Start Shipping At The End Of October. They Will Be $599 But Are Still At $450 Presale As Of Yesterday. I Plan On Ordering One Soon. (I Have To Make Arrangements With The Misses)

I have been looking at the Solidoodle 4 and the press for the school. I wont know if funding is approved for this until later this month, but if it isn't, I will probably purchase one anyway and donate it.

It uses standard filament too.

The press looks promising, but shipping must be a dog!

The Press looks like a nice little machine. Im curious how there new software works. One thing that seems odd is it only uses 180watt power supply. That seems way too small to run any heated bed ive ever herd of. Solidoodle has a pretty good following and ive herd some good things about them. I almost crapped myself with the filament prices though $43 for 2lbs is highway robbery.

Though you can use other rolls I believe.

You'll get what you pay for with a 3D printer.

Also, as someone mentioned building one for not much cheaper - you will find it's usually cheaper to get a build it yourself kit as the people who bundle the kits together buy in bulk, you don't, they get better prices.

I've been keeping an eye on 3D printers for a couple of years and have to say that nothing else gets as many good reviews as the Makerbot printers. They may be a bit more than their competition but there are a lot of reasons why they still continue to trade at those prices.

Buy cheap and you buy at least twice in my experience (with everything not just 3D printers).

I would have to agree with everything you said Rich. Makerbot does get good reviews There printers do seem to work extremely well but i have seen failed prints come out of makerbot's just like any cheaper printer. I believe makerbot has a cult following much like apple computers do...

I think if you build your own open source printer or build a kit you can get allot of bang for your buck. When i look at the components of a makerbot i just don't see where the extra cost went. Its not like there stepper motors are any different than ones i buy.. or there belts are super special.

EZ-Robots had a lot of problems with failed prints on a makerbot but once they knew what was wrong and got it set up right they went from 1 to 5 printers.

Anthony from XLRobots will surely agree that Makerbot are best but do need setting up correctly.

You also need to consider why so many other companies produce makerbot clones. You wouldn't clone rubbish.