[AlexGrant]

David, the HP designjet is a plotter. In the lab we have a Fortus 250 and a uPrint Plus on the ABS printing side (what you would use for any robot parts) and a Zprint used for showcasing designs as it prints in a powder base resulting in fragile parts.

All of the machines we use in the lab are expensive commercial machines owned by the university but there are plenty of other avenues to go down. With the funding you are looking at I would suggest a Replicator 2x as an out of the box solution. After purchasing the machine you should still set aside money for plastic and maintaining the machine.

With this option you can allocate around $4-5,000 for this printer and use the remainder of your funds on other equipment.