unless you have an SLS/SLA printer, which i don't and until the wanhao d7 is a bit more developed can't afford

what about

shapeoko

solid, not too expensive

and no printed parts

i've considered it

it's a pretty good option

but then i've seen how some of the chinese routers in the $400-$600 range perform after simply replacing the spindle, and it's pretty impressive

isn't it the price range of shapeoko

shapeoko is $1100

the big ones a few hundred more

thought it was cheaper

maybe I was thinking of something else

$1100 is cheap for cnc stuff

it was fkn groundbreaking honestly, cnc machining went from six figure price tags and diy and no middle ground to an off the shelf western router for a bit over a thousand bucks

the real cost is still the tooling though

even chinese tooling worth bothering with is expensive

there's cheap "high speed steel" tooling, but it will break and ruin your day

also

what are the printers you own?

i have a heeeeavily modified wanhao duplicator i3 and i have a kossel

would not recommend the kossel, i have yet to really get it dialed in, was fun to build but cartesian robot is just better

no effector tilt or anything, no ultra-precise measurements with calipers i can't afford required

trivial to add another extruder if you want and don't mind sacrificing some x axis for it

who bought ifive 4s tablet here

i remember someone got it

is it good?

this i3 looks solid

the main downside to the wanhao i3 is the melzi board it uses, you have to replace that if you wanna add a second extruder

but the frame is pretty fkn solid out of the box and if you want you can reinforce it with community-made mods until it makes $2000 pritners look flimsy and jiggly

replace the stock nozzle cooler

what's the board?

some custom thing?

micro swiss makes a replacement hotend for it that'll let you print nylon and polycarbonate and (do not do this without a permanganate air scrubber please) POM

it's a pretty common low-end board that basically just combines the arduino and stepper drivers onto one board

ramps?

it's like shitty ramps kinda yeah

it's the next thing i'm replacing

so it's even worse than ramps

it works fine if you only need the one extruder

also: they advertise 0.1mm layer height, this is false