Meant to add quite a bit more to that post but someone came and I wanted to get my post in as a marker.
Recently i have been doing a fair bit of research on these 3D printers. his has involved traveling a fair distance to visit people, mainly engineers who have got these things to see how easy they are to work plus quality.
After the first couple of trips it soon became obvious that quality is the deciding factor with these things and from what I have seen this boils down to software..
First the reprap type machines, it seems to me that being open sourced no one is in charge and everyone seems to be doing their own thing and they all use a variation of the same 2 or 3 softwares which haven't been updated in ages.
One of the most important things with 3D printing complex models is the support mesh that needs to be generated to support the actual model. This is worked out from the model itself and is down to the software to work out what is the best solution. this is where the open source software falls over. Not enough work has been put into his aspect.
Recently in MEW there was an article called Another look at Reprap in 204 / 205
Take a look at some of the printed parts in issue 205 and this is typical of the quality.
Now I had chance to look at one of the UP! Minis actually working and the difference was like night and day.
Easy to use, not limited to cartridges, plenty of thought gone in to the mesh problem and it can also self calibrate itself. Parts printed look like moulded parts, not all furry and steps or layers showing.
If I was buying one at this moment I'd go for the UP! mini and I'm not associated in any way with them or anyone who sells them.
One other thing I need to point out though after all the hype of owning one and what you can do with it.
You need a model to work with. Can't stress this enough.
OK if you want to print star wars characters or similar that someone has bothered drawing and making available but if you want to print a cylinder for say a pattern you need the drawing.
So of far more importance is being able to draw in 3D and save as an STL file.
If you can't handle this then really a 3D printer is a toy too far.