I bought a dimension bst1200 for my office back in 2004 it was $30k and pretty damn amazing for the time, it was a workhorse and we ran that thing daily until the company was sold in 2012 with very little down time. We maintained a service contract on it and knew the local techs well but i have no complaints about the quality of the machine the techs were usually only in our office for scheduled maintenance and upgrades there was very little unexpected downtime with that machine. I later purchased the same machine for a college i was teaching at and advising on the build out of their makerspace… educational pricing was nearly 50% less than retail.
In 2008 i bought an objet eden 350v for the same office. I think after the finance charges the price was close to $250k. the output from that machine was stunning but the service contract and consumables were very incredibly expensive and the machine went down regularly (service contract was $8k a year and didn’t cover parts). The power wash station that was required to clean the parts was a joke and went down as often as the printer.
In 2013 I bought a makerbot rep2x for another office, it was a nightmare and makerbot took it back.
Then I bought a first gen form 1 printer for the same office another disaster that eventually went back to FormLabs.
In 2014 i bought a davinci 1.0 from XYZ for myself, i walked in to a micro center and bought it off the shelf for $400. it had approximately the same quality and build envelope as the first Dimension machine i bought for $30k. I was happy with it for about 6 months, it was not a solid workhorse and became very finicky and prone to problems which might be OK with a hobby level machine but not when you need to depend on it, now it collects dust.
in 2014 I bought the XYZ Nobel for myself, it was terrible and it went back to XYZ.
Early last year i purchased the Form 2 and haven’t had a single problem with it yet, the build volume is only 1/4 the capacity of my old objet and it only prints in a single material so you have support joints to deal with but for the price difference i can accept those things without any complaint, the print resolution is as good as i ever remember the objet being. They now have a pretty broad material line and the accessories they’re adding are nice features to have. I recently received their new enclosed, automated power-wash system and it makes the whole process pretty clean.
I am going to be assembling another team and kitting out a new office in the upcoming year and i will more than likely just go with a form 2 to start and maybe just add more if we need more volume. I’ll probably also ad an FDM system to make more durable models but not sure which one at this point.
I have no relationship with Form and i’m definitely not on here schilling for them but I’ve purchased a pretty broad range of printers and the form2 is easily the most bang for the buck.