MakerBot/RepRap is it worth buying one

[PicassoCT]

Question is Topic:

Quite expensive but also- very, very cool..having your own factory, guess the money dribbles in over the years, you dont have to travell to home depot every other minute. But 950 $ is quite expensive, anybody has exp how durable those printouts really are?

http://store.makerbot.com/

[knorke]

just use lego

[KaiserJ]

for rep-raps, i think its part of their mission statement that if you build one, you create the parts for another as your first project in order to pass it along to others; maybe you can get most of the parts like this!

i've thought about getting something like that tho

[PicassoCT]

I mean, its not that i just wanted to print out some toy figurines (although my first ton of plastic might be spend that way) - but also there is demand beyond- only point is- how stable are these parts. If they break on first assignment, well forget it.

For statues, art and figurine i can always return to clay and papercraft

[Caydr]

They're pretty limited in what they can do and how accurately they can do it. And while they can 99% reproduce their parts, it takes like a year.

If you're looking at $1000 anyway, save up a little longer and get a proper 3D printer/rapid prototyping machine. I don't recall what sorts of prices the entry-level models start at, but they're infinitely more accurate, although I'm not sure they'd be able to use as wide a range of base materials like chocolate for example.

Tell you what else is fun, and something you could actually make cash with, is a little laser engraver. Buy a DS, engrave some famous logo on it, and you've doubled or tripled your money if not more. A 20 watt or so solid-state pulsed laser is all you need and they're not as expensive as you'd think. Solid state lasers like anything else have their own unique set of quirks but give it a few months and you'll be able to do some pretty neat stuff.

[Caydr]

Example:

http://www.desktopfactory.com/our_product/

It's 5x the cost but it can make things besides squiggly-looking ipod covers.