The raw printed items where never intended to be sellable although there are people out there that will buy them. I just had a lady buy a little keyring I made with her name and no finishing of any kind but removing the brim for 20 bucks. That will buy another roll of filament. That was the price she offered and felt it was worth.

Ok. Is there any style of 3D printer that can be purchased down the road for under $3000 that produces high quality objects with real commercial selling prospects with no overhang issues and are strong, and the machine itself needs very little per print maintenence? Just occasional calibration?

That's why you get a 3d printer. To prototype and perfect your model till you can have a high quality model or mold made by a company.

Ok. Is there any style of 3D printer that can be purchased down the road for under $3000 that produces high quality objects with real commercial selling prospects with no overhang issues and are strong, and the machine itself needs very little per print maintenence? Just occasional calibration?

No, and there never will be. It is nature of this type of equipment.  It will always need upkeep, adjustments, and maintenance. They dont call them robots for nothing. You really have to step back and think about what all is going on in one of our printers to understand just why they need so much TLC. Then when you add a laser, powder leveling, dust filtering, and all the other bells you are only multiplying the complexity and need for attention.

You seem to be looking for a printer thst can print s functional wrench with the ease and setup of a regularplug and play printer for paper. All you hsve to do is swap out the media supply occasionally.  Or maybe more like the Replicator on the Enterprise.  Ok the replicator was a joke. But we will never see a printer that can print forge quality functional wrenches any time soon. At the very least not in any of our lifetimes.

I try to be skeptical about kickstarter pricing.

Really, these printers use a spray to replace the laser in a SLS printer. Selective laser sintering does the same thing, but uses powdered metal and a high powered laser to fuse it together. It's often used for the medical industry and produces very strong, high quality parts. It's even being used now to make parts for spacecraft.

If you want to see an awesome high/low tech approach, here's a solar powered computer using a fresnel lens and sand in the desert to fuse glass in a sort of Selective Sun Sintering: http://www.markuskayser.com/work/solarsinter/

The cheapest SLS printer I know of uses resin and is made by Norge, supposed to be released later this year. The mini version (The Ice1) is supposed to be around $13,000 I think. We'll have to see when it's released.

I think what you are talking about is DMLS printers. SLS usually uses thermoplastic materials. I think DMLS requires supports as well.

I've heard a few going to kickstarter around the $5000 range.

http://www.gizmag.com/3d-printing-sugar/28379/

(of course the article says the process details are secret, but it sure looks like it is probably sintered powder).

There are some hobby level powder efforts underway.  The Desktop Factory was going to be a powder printer at $5000, but they ran out of money and had their assets bought by 3D Systems in 2009.  It apparently used a halogen to fuse powder, but it's hard to know exactly what their process was.  It looked promising, and was a kind of precursor to the failed Kickstarters of today - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2341108,00.asp

The Peachy is 100 dollars.

The Peachy is a stereolithographic printer, and doesn't do sintering. I was talking about laser sintering printers, where the laser is fusing powder together instead of curing a resin

Really, these printers use a spray to replace the laser in a SLS printer. Selective laser sintering does the same thing, but uses powdered metal and a high powered laser to fuse it together. It's often used for the medical industry and produces very strong, high quality parts. It's even being used now to make parts for spacecraft.

If you want to see an awesome high/low tech approach, here's a solar powered computer using a fresnel lens and sand in the desert to fuse glass in a sort of Selective Sun Sintering: http://www.markuskayser.com/work/solarsinter/

The cheapest SLS printer I know of uses resin and is made by Norge, supposed to be released later this year. The mini version (The Ice1) is supposed to be around $13,000 I think. We'll have to see when it's released.

The Peachy is 100 dollars.

If you want to see an awesome high/low tech approach, here's a solar powered computer using a fresnel lens and sand in the desert to fuse glass in a sort of Selective Sun Sintering: http://www.markuskayser.com/work/solarsinter/

The cheapest SLS printer I know of uses resin and is made by Norge, supposed to be released later this year. The mini version (The Ice1) is supposed to be around $13,000 I think. We'll have to see when it's released.

I have no issue with clean powder and the object doesn't need to be engineering strength. When you refer to laser and resin do you mean like form1 liquid resin and laser that prints upside-down? I've read that is also rather fragile and I don't think it handles the overhang issues at all. With powder the entire print area supports each layer. Also there are so studies on object printing that suggest many ways to strengthen objects after printing.

There is no overhang issue with SLA processes as the layer is never hot. The process is simply a hardening process where the resin molecules struck by the UV light of the laser harden and bond to those directly adjacent to them. In the industry the technology is used in, they do not have to be that strong. They are notmally used to make plaster molds that are used for jewelry and get burned out of the mold during the firing process. That is how rwdin base works and its main use. There are SLA powder systems that bond stronger than resin an now they even have metal powder that bonds with very good and functional strength. 

Peachy has confirmed they have started production and will have all the backer kits shipped out by end of July. So I will let you know first hand the durability of  resin print versus fff.

TheBaron wrote:

I will say fused filament manufacturing (reprap, etc) is pretty much the worst kind of 3d printing if you're just looking at part quality. Its advantage is cost, both to build and operate. The other technologies are out there and give better results, it's just nearly impossible to build them on a maker's budget.

How much would you imagine it would cost? I don't mind if a print takes twice as long. I just want the benefit of higher quality models and not having to deal with curling or overhangs and babysitting the machine for when the same role of filament snags for the tenth time wasting hours of progress. The powder type of 3D printing really seems like it has to be the future.

Except you have to clean up the unused powder, not to mention dig the print out of the powder when it is done.  These types of printers work the same as an SLA, all they did was replace the resin with powder and the laser with s binder jet. I also hsve read most of these powder based prints are rather fragile. The actual original goal for these powder based printets was to make forms for molds that would later be used to cast metal for the jewelry industry mainly. Its not really the future, it has benn around for some time. Z Corp has several powder/binder models.