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Wanting a Prusa I3 and them being on back order, I bought a Chinese clone from Hictop.
It was a poor quality and dangerous pile of junk.

Trading standards got involved after I pointed out it would fail a pat test, catch fire as firmware thermal protection disabled. I issued 3DP17 thermal protection enabled marlin firmware for it.

The hictop printer is generally a pain in the neck for reliable printing and the design limits speed as belt ringing etc.

My advice to anyone is buy best you can afford, I have a Craftunique craftbot 2 and it makes printing a joy.

By all means build a reprap printer, just understand you get what you pay for and Chinese clones are generally poor quality

Yes a lot of them are.

it all comes down to the quality of the components. We have looked at importing prusa i3 kits as a lot of people won't these because theyr'e cheap but non that we have found have the quality required.

you definitely get what you pay for.

iDig3Dprinting wrote: ↑Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:16 am you definitely get what you pay for.

To be honest I'm not in full agreement with that synopsis. Undoubtedly there ARE crap products out there, but I'm loathe to tar them all with the same brush. They are after all trying to make a profit, and if that means they shave some corners then I'm generally OK with that. If it means that I receive something which isn't in glitzy packaging that's not a big negative in my view.

What is important in the 3D printer world is the support provided by the supplier. And buying at a premium price won't guarantee that. In fact I'd offer that the shrink wrapped brigade would tend towards the poor support end of the spectrum.

I bought a Makerbot 2X printer a while back. It cost multi-thousand. The printer was OK but the support was lacking. I eventually replaced it with a Wanhao 4S, which was pretty much the same printer, at a quarter the price. Good printer, and support might have been better, although the UK suppliers did OK.

I'm finding similar with the Creality CR-10S. Not bad quality and the UK supplier met and exceeded my expectations. And you can't get much cheaper than the CR-10S.

Yes who you buy it from also makes a difference as they should be helping you to get the most out of your machine and resolve print issues. But, if it is built poorly in the first place and the components are substandard, all the best support in the world is not going to resolve it.

Yes and you are right in that, like anything, you can buy from a reputable manufacturer to find that the model you have brought is not up to scratch. Makerbot, you may remember, were riding high until they upgraded their models with a new extruder (not the current extruder a previous one) that was very poorly designed.

So do some research, find a printer with good reviews (proper reviews) and find a good supplier (like us).

I admit that many cheap 3D printers are not worth buying, but how about if you get branded 3D printers at cheap prices.
Yes, you can get a desired branded product at an extremely cheap price from 3D Printers Bay.