Bucaneer, Da Vinci, and the future of RepRap

recently this wave of professionally looking 3d printers are hitting the market, namely the 499 Da Vinci and the 379 Bucaneer from Pirate 3D. I'm just thinking about the effects this is going to have on the RepRap movement.

The cheapest Prusa i3 I can find on the web is from 3D Printer Czar and DIYTechShop, which still costs 499 and one needs to put in hours to assemble and calibrate the machine. Other RepRap models such as MakerGear or MendelMax 2 all cost well over 1K. DIY has its own beauty but I think it's also fairly reasonable to assume a large number of pro-ams will be drawn to these pre-made machines. The focus might gradually shift to making 3D printable content instead of developing new machines (if it's not more economical).

I love RepRap and I really hope it will last; however, maybe it's just natural that professionally made product will gradually take over DIY ones (look at the evolution of personal computers). It's just my own humble opinion and I do not intend to offend anyone in the forum. So what do you guys think it's going to happen next?

I bought an Ormerod before christmas for 500GBP (before tax), spent a couple of days building it and three or four months troubleshooting and helping iron out bugs in firmware, then started to build a more robust machine re-using parts from it (especially the duet card). This last step ground to a halt in March due to work issues, and the fact that it would have helped to have a 3D printer to make some of the fittings rather than machining from scratch as I had been doing.

On Wednesday I noticed the Da Vinci for sale at 415GBP (before tax), and decided to take a punt (I need something to help me rebuild the Ormerod, and also need some prototypes made). The Da Vinci turned up this afternoon and it took twenty minutes to unbox it and start printing - it totally exceeds my expectations and I'd definitely recommend it to people (who like me, originally) want to get some prototypes made quickly and cheaply. It's a totally self contained consumer item that works out of the box with no tuning and has several features such as automatic bed levelling an nozzle wiping, print job upload over USB then walkaway, a fornt panel LCD with the ability to pause/continue/cancel a print run as well as run calibrations etc, it's also mainly enclosed and works with ABS out of the box (it uses a UHU glue stick to aid adhesion to its glass heated bed by the way - which seems to work better than any other medium I've tried for ABS).

The construction is mainly pressed sheet metal structurally, with injection-moulded case (not unlike a modern laserjet or inkjet), the build volume is 20x20x20, and it doesn't look out of place in my office.

The software doesn't allow much tweaking (other than setting speed and layer height), so I'm not sure how it will compare to the multiple (useful) options available in slic3r and Cura for fine tuning print quality when printing a range of designs -time will tell.

I imagine many of the people who originally bought Ormerods would have bought the Da Vinci instead at the time (Ormerod was originally released through an electronic supplier, RS which attracted a particular group of customers with similar motivations and expectations) - the Ormerod started fulfilling these expectations after a couple of months, the Da Vinci seems to be doing that out of the box...

I'd guess that the future may be that these new machines will cause some pricing adjustment (if there is any) from reprap kit makers, and definitely cause an upset in the Cube/Up2 market. RepRap though has the major strength of NOT being a an out of the box solution with plug and play functionality and limited customization - and will continue to innovate and and attract people who want to experiment and develop the field.

Ray