MakerGear Forum

Hello M2 users,

We are thinking of adding the M2 printer for printing for our customers. What are your users seeing as far as durability, servicablity, tech support and printing cost per square inch? What are your experiences? We work with quality control and laser scanning. We have over 24 years of experience and need to know this is our best option.

Thank you for you help with this decision,

Owen & LuAnn

Asking on the M2 forums if the M2 is a good machine is dubious at best. With little exception, we all love our M2s. Some of us (me) have several.

It won the 3D Hubs "best printer" award with 100% of owners recommending it.

It's a good little machine...

Also, how does "square inch" work with 3D models? I'm not trying to be an ass, it's a legitimate question

We were told by Rick to ask the forum group about these questions. We have looked at other machines with plastic frames and foreign mfg and decided to ask the questions here. We are are looking for honest input here to invest our money in a business. Thank you for your help and concern.

Owen & LuAnn

I think in most cad solid models you can see the cubic volume of a model. Just looking for a good way to quote the material cost.

Thanks,

Owen & LuAnn

What type of stuff are you planning to print?

The reason that I suggested you post here is to discuss what you are trying to do and see if the M2 is a good fit for your business.

Rick

Your material costs will mostly be filament. That ranges from $25 to $50/kg depending on what it's made out of, the quality, and who you buy it from. If you input the price/kg in S3D, it will give you an estimate of how much that part will cost in materials.

Durability is excellent for the machine itself. It is a solid chunk of steel. There are parts that will wear down over time, such as the extruder gear pinion, and if you have a mishap you may break one of the printed mount parts. You can print replacements yourself, although only before you break them, obviously.

Serviceability is excellent, it is an open frame machine which means you have easy access to all components. Everything goes on (and comes off) with a few simple tools. Maintenance consists of making sure the rails are occasionally lubricated.

MakerGear tech support is outstanding, I think everyone here will agree? They have a reputation of standing behind their product and responding quickly to any issues. There is a six month warranty period.

If you are planning to run a printing service, you should speak to insta, who does that sort of thing. Here is a recent thread about quoting for service jobs: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1839

Thank you Rick,

We do a lot of work for many different companies, inspection of large weldments to small plastic parts (all to CAD files) of plastic molds with shrink factor. We see it all. Our hopes are to add value to our laser scanning and inspections business.

Thanks for your insight,

Owen & LuAnn

Hey jsc,

Thank you I will look at that post. One of the reason we are looking at the M2 is metal frame and American made.

Thanks again ,

OwenH wrote:printing cost

I'd say the printer and plastic round off to zero compared to the labor cost.

Plastic at $50/kg is 5 cents/gram. A gram of solid plastic will be a bit under 1 cm³. Extruding runs at about 10 mm³/s = 36 cm³/hr, so figure the plastic costs $2/hr. It will actually be much less than that, because most objects have low-density honeycomb infill, but it's a nice round number.

You can probably expense the printer, rather than depreciate it. That's a buck an hour if you run it all day, every day, on first shift, and replace it every year.

So the cost for the printer and all the plastic you can use will run less than $3/hr.

The M2 runs dependably enough that it doesn't need much babysitting or maintenance, but you must have one person trained up, paying attention, and competent to diagnose model / slicing / alignment / filament problems. Assuming a burdened rate of $20/hr for that person, everything else is basically free.

That's simplistic, of course, but to a good first approximation labor will be everything...

ednisley wrote:

OwenH wrote:printing cost

I'd say the printer and plastic round off to zero compared to the labor cost.

Plastic at $50/kg is 5 cents/gram. A gram of solid plastic will be a bit under 1 cm³. Extruding runs at about 10 mm³/s = 36 cm³/hr, so figure the plastic costs $2/hr. It will actually be much less than that, because most objects have low-density honeycomb infill, but it's a nice round number.

You can probably expense the printer, rather than depreciate it. That's a buck an hour if you run it all day, every day, on first shift, and replace it every year.

So the cost for the printer and all the plastic you can use will run less than $3/hr.

The M2 runs dependably enough that it doesn't need much babysitting or maintenance, but you must have one person trained up, paying attention, and competent to diagnose model / slicing / alignment / filament problems. Assuming a burdened rate of $20/hr for that person, everything else is basically free.

That's simplistic, of course, but to a good first approximation labor will be everything...

I am stealing all those numbers for my own accounting for my LLC.