Quote:
Originally Posted by Brandon Holley
Ding ding ding.
Dimension needs to take plastic filament and load it into each cartridge and assembly the other components (PCBA, rubber drive wheel) into it as we'll.
They're also probably making their margin on top of the cost of doing that.
-Brando
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It's for the same reasons as buying ink cartridges for your paper printer. You can find non-OEM ABS for Dimensions machines as well, but the quality just isn't there IMO. This is also usually the case for paper printers.
Stratasys/Dimension also has quality control over the ABS. Such as color, diameter, grade, and other factors such as environmental conditions. (Moisture, dust, oils, etc.) In the commercial world this is very important. I don't want to replace an empty cartridge to find a slightly different shade of color or grade of ABS...
As you can see they come in expensive cartridges for many reasons other than profit. By the way I should note that the cartridges are recycled back to Stratasys/Dimension.
At any given time I have a several thousand dollars worth of plastic on the shelf or in equipment.
