I've seen a lot of friends have a lot of trouble with hobbyists 3d printer but I had a Stratasys Dimension Elite (on the higher end of filament based 3D printer

I've seen a lot of friends have a lot of trouble with hobbyists 3d printer but I had a Stratasys Dimension Elite (on the higher end of filament based 3D printers) and it was significantly easier to use. At like 20x the cost of a MakerBot it's only justifiable if you consistently use it for prototyping and proprietary printers are tuned to a specific plastic so using their cartridges with cheaper plastic usually yields worse results (so, hack a cartridge eeprom + onboard computer and deal with shitty prints or pay $200+ per spool on top of the up front cost). With a double print head, it extruded a support filament which made it very easy to print complex shapes (with everything cleaned and carefully set up even a good mobius net is possible) with any plastic. The support filament dissolved afterward in an ultrasonic bath filled with some basic chemical that also smoothed out the parts after printing. The cartridges made it much easier to work with spools but was very wasteful since any time you switched you'd lose a bit. If you're going to build a 3d printer however, the stuff that Stratasys does seems to really help: the print envelope is sealed and uses a bunch of fans and heating elements to keep the temperature well above ambient (I don't remember the exact number but it was easily 110+ F) as well as heat the printing platform. The z-axis is on a ball screw independent of the XY axes which, although expensive (as usual, look to ebay), helps with the reliability. The print head would print several layers (dozens usually) and then go over to a metal wire brush to wipe off any remaining plastic from the extruder. All in all it was a well built machine but way too expensive with several large electronic boards (including an Intel mobo running Fedora or something) and a lot of wasted space and metal. The heated envelope, ball screw, and support material made a huge difference but in the end the results were only so useful due to material limitations and terrible tolerances (I would usually print the same part half a dozen times or more in order to get one with the right dimensions to fit in a more precise metal part if they mated in several places or in an irregular way)