A friend of mine and I have been making use of the MakerBot Replicator Dual here at the office for the past several weeks, and it's been such a good time that I've given thought to putting together my own, with his help. I'm not a mechanical or electrical whiz, but my buddy is, and we're confident that we can put together a RepRap bot of some sort without too much difficulty, even if it takes a while.
Initially I leaned toward a Prusa i2, in kit form, but then I ran across the LulzBot AO-101 and that turned me on to the MendelMax 1.5 format. However, as is often the case when I do more reading, I found out about the Rostock Max and it got me pretty excited.
My big concerns center on reliability. If I'm going to convince my wife to let me spend the money, I've got to have something that isn't going to fail miserably every time I try to print. Sure, I know that there isn't a single printer that has 100% reliability, but at the same time I don't want to have a ton of issues that require hours and hours to solve.
The MendelMax 1.5 looks like a fairly proven machine, and the kit price (at least from Ultibots) is within reason...but the Rostock Max from SeeMeCNC is a couple hundred dollars cheaper, has a bigger build volume, and looks like it might be simpler to assemble. But it's a much newer design, and that makes me nervous.
So what's the best course of action? How's the reliability and ease of build for the Rostock Max? Is the print going to fail if I bump the printer even a tiny bit? (My buddy thinks that'll be the case.)
Or, should I just pack it up and stick with the MakerBot at work...which is more temperamental than reliable? :)
Initially I leaned toward a Prusa i2, in kit form, but then I ran across the LulzBot AO-101 and that turned me on to the MendelMax 1.5 format. However, as is often the case when I do more reading, I found out about the Rostock Max and it got me pretty excited.
My big concerns center on reliability. If I'm going to convince my wife to let me spend the money, I've got to have something that isn't going to fail miserably every time I try to print. Sure, I know that there isn't a single printer that has 100% reliability, but at the same time I don't want to have a ton of issues that require hours and hours to solve.
The MendelMax 1.5 looks like a fairly proven machine, and the kit price (at least from Ultibots) is within reason...but the Rostock Max from SeeMeCNC is a couple hundred dollars cheaper, has a bigger build volume, and looks like it might be simpler to assemble. But it's a much newer design, and that makes me nervous.
So what's the best course of action? How's the reliability and ease of build for the Rostock Max? Is the print going to fail if I bump the printer even a tiny bit? (My buddy thinks that'll be the case.)
Or, should I just pack it up and stick with the MakerBot at work...which is more temperamental than reliable? :)