The Ultimaker 2 ($2,899) is a well-designed, good-looking 3D printer geared toward early adopters, schools, and product designers. It has a large build area, and consistently produced good-quality prints in our tests. Most notably, it's a breeze to set up and is the only 3D printer we've tested that operated without a single hitch. The Ultimaker 2 aces ease of use, and despite its high price, its our top 3D printer pick for makers and designers.

Meet the Ultimaker 2

The printer is the brainchild of Ultimaking Ltd., a company focused on 3D printing founded by three Dutch entrepreneurs. Ultimaker sells them directly, and they're also available through online retailer Dynamism, which also provides support. 

The white-framed, single-extruder Ultimaker 2 measures 15.3 by 13.9 by 13.3 inches (HWD), and weighs 23 pounds. It's boxy, yet handsome, with an open front, translucent sides displaying the Ultimaker robot logo, and an interior that is well illuminated by strings of lights running down each of the front inside edges. It has a generous build area of 8.8 by 8.0 by 9 inches, among the largest of the 3D printers we've tested.

You can use either polylactic acid (PLA) or acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic filament to print objects. We tested with PLA. Unlike most 3D printers, which use 1.75mm-thick plastic filament, the Ultimaker uses a thicker 2.85mm filament, which is available from various online dealers from between $30 and $65 for a 1kg spool. The Ultimaker 2's extrusion system is designed specifically for that filament width.

The build platform is a sheet of glass, and the platform is heated before each print job, which helps to keep the corners of ABS plastic objects from curling up. When you first set up the printer, you are asked to apply some glue from an included Staples glue stick to the center of the platform. This makes it easy to remove objects after each print job, and it's far less messy and onerous than the glue system used in the 3D Systems Cube 3D Printer. With the Cube, not only do you have to apply glue before each print job, you need to run the platform under warm water for up to five minutes before the glue is soft enough so that you can remove the object. 

Setup 
Setup consists of attaching the power supply, putting the build plate in place, snapping the filament spool holder and guide in place in back of the printer, turning the printer on, and following the instructions on the five-line display, which is controlled by a dial next to it. First, it helps you level the build plate, moving the extruder to three different positions and having you turn the dial and tighten screws until the extruder is 1 millimeter from the plate at each position. You need to tweak the tightening until a sheet of paper fits, with slight resistance, between the extruder and the build plate.

Then you load the filament material in the feeder to the extruder, and push the filament strand into a tube until it's grabbed between a wheel and gear, and pulled into the extruder. Getting the filament to catch between the two wheels may take some force, and more than one attempt. But once it catches, the filament shoots through a tube to the extruder, and soon it melts and comes out the nozzle. You then add some glue to the build plate, select a file from the memory card, press Print, and you're off.

SD or Bust

Peculiarly, the Ultimaker 2 is one of the few printers we've tested that doesn't support printing over a USB connection. Instead, there's an SD card slot, and the printer comes with a 4GB card with a few test files loaded. The printer has a USB port, but according to the company, it's just for firmware updates. It's unusual that any printer, 3D or otherwise, lacks the ability to print from a PC over USB. (The 3D Systems Cube also eschews directly printing from a PC via USB, but does offer Wi-Fi in addition to printing from a USB thumb drive.) The Ultimaker 2's manual states that the printer is Wi-Fi ready, but Doodle3D's Wi-Fi-Box accessory ($111) is required to connect wirelessly.

That said, I loaded a number of files into the Cura software (more on that in a second), saved them to an SD card on my computer, transferred the card to the printer, and began printing, a process that took 15 to 20 seconds longer than it would have had I been able to print directly over a USB connection. Being limited to SD card printing may not be ideal, but I didn't find it particularly bothersome, and it's a small matter considering that 3D printing jobs often take several hours to complete.

Ultimaker offers a free software package, Cura, for download. I installed Cura on a laptop running Windows 8.1, loaded and modified 3D object files, and saved them to the SD card. The software is easy to use, and lets you resize and move objects, load multiple objects for printing, and change the resolution and other settings.

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