How to buy a 3D printer in China, or a toy for $ 1000

    Greetings, Habr. My name is Igor, I’m a sales manager, and I am the first to open a series of posts about interesting purchases through our store. This review will focus on the 3D printer I purchased, or, to be precise, the selection process itself.

    In general, 3D printing, on the one hand, is always of interest, on the other hand, it is difficult to call it a mass phenomenon. There are several reasons:

    1) The price of the device itself is quite high.
    At least you will give $ 300, for a very decent unit from $ 1000, not including delivery.

    2) A decent cost of consumables
    If you need paper to print on a regular printer, a 3D printer prefers plastic at a price of $ 20-30 per kilogram

    3) Lack of understanding why this is necessary
    This is the main reason. The first two are rather layered on it, "closing the topic."


    Flour of choice


    In my case, with the third paragraph, everything was simple - I bought a printer as a gift to my brother, knowing for sure that he needed it and would use it.
    What did the buying process look like? To begin with, I decided on the amount, i.e. with its capabilities: for the purchase + delivery, I laid 50,000 rubles. and not a cent more. In this price range, I danced, looking for a better option, oddly enough, in China. Why China Because a significant part of the manufacturers is located there, and also because I work in an intermediary company from China, it would be a sin not to use this.

    Honestly, at the beginning of my search, I did not imagine the scale of the disaster. I was sure that, since there is not much demand, there will not be many manufacturing companies (and even more so models). In general, this turned out to be a misconception, there were a lot of options, and this fact would greatly lengthen the time of my searches if it were not for the help of a friend who (unlike me) came across these devices and even had one at home.

    I’ll say right away that the proposed options “assemble the printer with your own hands” I immediately cut off, because quite self-critical in matters of where my hands are growing from, and the chances of losing (not cheap, by the way) the details from the fact that I had poorly fitted them to each other discouraged any interest in such experiments. Therefore, after three evenings of discussions and a few bottles of red, along with the very familiar one, our joint choice fell on these models, among which I had to choose myself:

    Cube (not to be confused with the next Cube X series)
    FlashForge 3D Printer - Creator
    ReplicatorG
    The MBot Cube

    image

    I will return to the most burning factor (price) at the end, because all of them (more or less) met my criteria. Here is what I compared in the first place:


    image


    The first dropout was the easiest. Although it was not very clear how critical the choice of printing was for my brother (in one or two colors), but I figured that if there is such an opportunity, and the price is almost unchanged - why refuse? At this stage, Cube dropped out (and the size of the model was the smallest).

    Further it was already more difficult: FlashForge lost in the size of the model at the output (in width), but then overtook all the others in height. ReplicatorG was inferior in print accuracy. Here I had no doubt (since the software of each of the printers allows you to set fairly accurate TTX) - the more accurate the forms, the less then you will have to work with sandpaper and, thus, I eliminated ReplicatorG.

    Price issue


    Between the two remaining, the most fierce struggle began - they were almost like twin brothers (given my requirements), but, nevertheless, mercantile spirit won.

    FlashForge, although it costs $ 10 more, but due to the weight (15 kg versus 18) was in delivery cheaper by 3000 r. I chose the delivery itself by EMS, so it took off a pretty penny - 14900 rubles, and if I took the Russian Post, I would give about 6000 rubles for delivery.
    The final cost price + delivery was: 48000r, if rounded

    Before ordering, just in case, I looked at FlashForge in Moscow stores, unfortunately, as expected, the minimum price was 62000r (on order). And some stores offered to purchase the more widespread The MBot Cube for almost 75,000 rubles, but there were more modest offers - for only 60,000 rubles (though not in Moscow, but in Kazan, but it seems to be taking into account delivery to Moscow).

    Purchase process


    Of course, I ordered through our system, although there are no indulgences for the workers (well, except perhaps the opportunity to personally control everything). All orders still go through the site. The process of buying from us is simple:

    · find what is required on the site, in my case a 3D printer;
    · Deposit the necessary amount into the account in your personal account (I did this in advance, but it is possible in the process);
    · Indicate the required number of units of goods, I understandably took 1 pc;
    · Indicate your details for the delivery of goods;
    · Confirm payment

    Then my order, like any other application, went into the system, and here I already took advantage of the privileges of the employee. They consist in the fact that you can get our workers in China. What I did, from the moment I checked out for my purchase: calling on Skype and asking for a thousand times to send more! More! 11 photos, still to test, check everything for the hundredth time, etc.;) In general, it was a headache for our entire Chinese office until the printer reached me (it took 13 days to get there).

    Brother appreciated the gift, which is important, and immediately put into action. As I understood from his reviews, the printer is working normally, stably, it does not require dancing with a tambourine. So the model turned out to be really good, I can safely recommend :)

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