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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by TaylorAlexander on Saturday June 30, 2018 @12:11AM (#17429433)
Ah. I was thinking something like the Prusa, which is $1000, and it’s derivatives which are $200-500. The BigRep is apparently around $40k. I think the cheaper printers ship in higher volumes.

As far as “decent”, I do a lot with my sub $1k machines. The expensive ones seem to work better, but the price is so high I don’t consider them. And I come from a background of CNC machining where I’m familiar with $100k machines. Now I’m really happy with my $500 printer.

Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware by janekm on Saturday June 30, 2018 @02:46AM (#17429799)
Actually I was thinking machines like the Creality3D ones (like the Ender 3S, I just bought one recently) which while far from perfect perform miracles at their (<$200) price point, in large part due to having a stiff frame with few resonances due to being built from commodity T-slot components. Even the Prusa i3 mk3 now uses T-slots for the base, though in their case it seems to be more of a DFM improvement. You're right though that sheet metal is very prevalent in the mid-range 3D printers and is an excellent choice for machines built in volume.