We asked the community for guest bloggers and your responds has been great! We believe that the fast-paced innovation in 3d printing is only possible by critical and open discussions between the community and Ultimaker.To kick off these talks is Bruce Wattendorf on the new Make: magazine. -Alexander Baloche
On November 20th Make: magazine has a new special 3D printer issue in news stands and available in the Maker Shed.This Guide is great if you are looking to buy a 3D Printer over the Holidays.
Make: magazine rated a bunch of 3D printers in this issue. They brought in numerous 3D printer enthusiasts to evaluate these 3D printers. I think they were very fair in the rating and made sure that everybody who evaluated a printer has no experience using that printer. The team working on that printer would have to assemble the printer and get it to print and rate the experience of a new owner. They had to print the same files that was printed on all of the printers. They also had to rate the printers on scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is the highest (eg.best). Here is how Ultimaker scored.
- Setup 4
- Documentation 3
- Ease of Use 4
- Hardware User Interface 4
- Machine Software 4
- Slicing Software 4
- Speed 5
- Reliability 4
- Print Quality 4-5
- Accuracy 5
- Support Overhangs 4
- Noise 4 (this means that the Ultimaker is above average quiet)
- Value 4
The Ultimaker was rated best open hardware, fastest and most accurate, these are three separate categories! John Abella and Matt Griffin and Eric Chu rated the Ultimaker. Â
If you are thinking about purchasing a Ultimaker or any other printer for that matter. You should check out the special issue. It covers a ton of other stuff both for anybody who is new to 3D printing or already has a 3d printer at home.
Make: also had a international 3D printing meet-up on Google groups on November 15th almost 1000Â people attended. They are planning another session early next year.
The special issue can be bought at news stands (in the US) or at Make: Magazine
Congrats guys…
The Ultimaker review ratings correlate to each other, based on my experiences with the machine. “Fastest” and “Most Accurate.” Yep–that’s why I bought an Ultimaker. The 3/5 score in “Documentation” is also spot-on. I’ve heard that Ultimaking LTD is working to improve that score,
The 4-5/5 score in “Print Quality” is unexpectedly low, but perhaps this is due to a problem with the reviewers. Sometimes reviewers expect “magic” or “mind reading” products to replace intelligent user interaction:
“The The snake and owl came out great, but the torture test had lots of stringing, mainly due to Cura’s default settings not having retraction turned on.”
That’s the nature of settings; you can’t have them both (all) ways in the same universe at the same time!
Oh….and “Best Open Hardware” reflects another factor in my decision to become an Ultimaker user. Given equal or better performance and price, I always choose open source. Just as I’ve selected Linux operating systems for my primary computing needs, the open source Ultimaker offers better opportunities for the development of printer customizations and both community and self-support than similar proprietary products!
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