5 New Professional 3D Printers Launched Abroad in 2024

The Mini 2 is a compact fused filament machine with a heated bed and a self-leveling routine. Its build volume is roughly 160 × 160 × 180 mm, which puts it in the desktop class. The Z-axis cable path runs on a printed guide instead of hanging loose, so vibration and wobble stay low and surface finish improves.

Where it earns its place is jigs, soft jaws, cable clips and check fixtures. Those parts see light loads and change often. A printed fixture can be in the operator's hand the same day it is drawn.

What rules it out is anything that has to hold a tolerance or take a load. The frame is light, the nozzle is a single 0.4 mm or 0.5 mm tip, and the bed is not enclosed. ABS and PC will warp on a part taller than about 40 mm.

MIG Systems built the Matrix around one problem: calibration on a big machine. It uses markerless alignment, so the head finds the work area without you taping printed targets to the plate. Setup time drops, and a job that used to need an hour of dialing in can start in minutes.

The working volume is about 760 × 610 × 610 mm, large enough to print a full dashboard bezel or a weld fixture in one piece. The gantry is modular, so a damaged rail or carriage can be swapped without scrapping the frame. That matters in a shop where the printer runs every day.

Big prints bring big distortion. On a 600 mm span, a long thin wall will curl at the ends unless you add ribs or print in a heated chamber. We see the same issue on machined parts: a 4,000 mm aluminum extrusion moves after roughing unless you leave stock and take a second pass.

The Matrix suits patterns, molds for vacuum casting and low-run production parts where a few tenths of a millimeter do not decide the fit. Parts that locate a bearing or seal a fluid path still belong on a mill or a lathe.

Form 3 is a stereolithography machine with a laser and a flexible resin tank. Build volume is about 145 × 145 × 185 mm. The low-force peeling motion pulls each layer off the film with less stress than a rigid tank, so thin ribs, small holes and text come out clean.

Layer height runs from 25 μm to 100 μm depending on resin. That is fine enough to print a mold insert for a small silicone part, a connector housing with 0.5 mm walls, or a dental model with a sharp margin line.

The catch is resin. Cured photopolymer is not a structural material. It creeps under steady load, it degrades in UV, and it chips when a screw bites into it. Threads printed in resin strip the first time you torque them.

Use resin for form and fit checks, for patterns that get cast, and for small molds that see low injection pressure. Anything that clamps, threads or springs should be machined from 6061 or 17-4PH instead.

Ultimaker 3 is a dual-extrusion FFF machine. Two print cores let you run a build material in one nozzle and a water-soluble or breakaway support in the other. Build volume is around 215 × 215 × 200 mm with both cores installed.

Soluble support is the reason to buy it. A part with an internal channel or a deep overhang prints without a knife in your hand afterward. Dissolve the support, rinse, and the cavity is open. For a manifold or a duct with a curved bore, that saves real time.

It is still FFF. Layer lines leave a rough surface, roughly Ra 6 to 15 μm as printed, and the Z bond is weaker than the XY bond. A part loaded across the layer direction will split before a machined one yields.

Dual extrusion also costs time. Two materials mean two purge cycles, and a 12-hour print can stretch to 18. On a short run of 20 brackets, we usually machine them from 6061-T6 and anodize the batch instead.

The i3 family is the open-source workhorse of the group. Build volume is near 250 × 210 × 210 mm, and the design is documented down to the printed parts. Owners upgrade the hotend, the bed or the controller as their needs change.

Low cost and open firmware make it a good teaching machine and a good first printer for a small shop. Spare parts are cheap, and a broken carriage is a print away from being fixed.

The trade-off is repeatability. A kit-built frame, a moving bed and no enclosure mean two machines in the same room can print the same file to different results. There is no closed calibration loop.

It is not a production machine. Running fifty identical parts with a ±0.1 mm fit requirement will fight you. Machining holds ±0.005 mm and 99.99% qualification across a run, which is why a bracket that must drop into a weld nut gets cut, not printed.

A common pattern in our shop: print the form, then cut the functional faces. The printed body confirms the shape, the clearances and how the part sits in the assembly. Once the design is frozen, the same geometry is programmed on a 5-axis center and cut from 7075 or 17-4PH.

That split works because the two processes answer different questions. Printing answers "does the shape fit?" Machining answers "does it hold, seal and last?" Trying to force one process to do both usually costs more than doing each job once.

If the printed part fails, look at the failure mode before changing the design. A split along a layer line is an orientation problem. A hole that comes out oval is a cooling problem. A thread that strips is a material problem, and no print setting will fix it.

For metal parts, we machine from the same CAD file the printer used. Tolerance, finish and material certificate come back with the parts, and the assembly sees one geometry, not two.