Is it worth going "Pro"? Trying out the Dagoma Sigma Pro 500Z! 

I'm French, and Dagoma... it's a disgrace for us... :/ A declining company, stuck in 2010, that fired their best engineer and dares to sell Cartesian printers without a heated bed for 500 euros!... There isn't any serious French company in 3D printing. I've looked at your test, and I'm truly ashamed, there's nothing right about it. Octoprint and Marlin on a "pro" machine for 2500 euros, really?! The French 3D community can't understand how a company like Dagoma manages not to go bankrupt because clearly they make mistake after mistake after mistake...

This whole thing just screams "hobby level consumer machine". Printed parts, generic UI on open source hardware, passively heated chamber and so on. Even their website continues this theme - French only website, no manual (at least according to this video) etc. Didnt convince me we are looking at an industrial level professional machine.

That was the nicest dismantling of a company's "pro" offering I've ever seen.

This would be my dream 3D printer in 2015

19:00: What you printing there homie? 🤨

Dagoma seems to have a different definition of "Pro" than the rest of the world. Probably explains why I've never heard of them.

Dagoma must must have an AMAZING sales team, because for any buyer with a passing interest in 3D printing, there's no chance they'd buy these. I'm actually kind of shocked a company selling things like this can even stay in business with a product like that...

It’s a 2017 printer plain and simple. The FLSUN V400 is a far superior machine that works perfectly

Finally, a machine for professional extreme adult toy cast makers.

Pro means well documented, reliable to the point of bulletproof, and supported. It doesn't mean costs the same as 5 V400 machines, but runs at 1/3rd the speed of one.

At 5:16 the printed part is a belt tension meter STRAIGHT from printables.

Way too nice. You don't have to lambast them, but you glossed over some pretty significant shortcomings. For a $2k+ machine, Dagoma has missed the boat. The wiggly 3D printed control panel, anemic bed temps, wacky control theme, and odd setup (or lack of setup) are just non-starters for a $2500 machine. FLSun will likely wipe the floor with this machine at less than half the price.

How far away is the dumpster ?

This seems to be what I would call the third type of "professional" machine; a "professional" machine made for non-professionals (usually educators), who want that first type of professional machine you mentioned but have absolutely no clue on what to look for (or rather, what to look out for) and want the reassurance of having a "pro" machine. This is why they seem to be aiming fo a bunch of interesting features without truly considering how to implement them well. It really reminds me of my experience with Makerbot's Replicator+, and my experience dealing with those vs a Mk3 or even a stock Ender 3 back in 2018.

In France they say that we don't have oil but we have ideas. Except it would be better to have good ones sometimes. This is quite symptomatic of all these small French companies which invest mainly in marketing without having the skills and production tools. Their real target is mainly administrations and schools.

I LOVE THE TEAM FORTRESS 2 REFERENCE!

I enjoyed how assembly segment was edited: crisp sound, focus on important steps, camera angles focus on whats happening

At a minimum I would expect a support team to answer any questions or aid in setup, multiple user management, and multiple printer management. So it can be used in a professional environment where people with different skill levels may all be using the same machine or machines.

From what I saw in this video, I think that an Ender 3 'Pro' is more 'Pro' than this Dagoma printer. In my direct experience with the printers we used at my job, I would consider the Lulzbot TAZ 5 that we purchased about 8 years ago for about $2300 as a 'Pro' printer. It was very well designed and put together, and it performed very reliably with very litte trouble. As a matter of fact, even though I retired from that job about 3 years ago, my company is still using that TAZ 5 printer, and it is performing as well as it ever did. We later purchased a Markforged Onyx 2 printer (at about $8000) for print carbon-fiber nylon parts, and that also performed very reliably for us. It could also add fiberglass fiber to reinforce the nylon carbon-fiber parts, which to my knowledge is something that only Markforged printers can do. So, I would definitely consider the Markforged printers 'Pro' quality as well. I think to me, the main criteria that I believe make for 'Pro' quality are durability and reliability.

From watching this whole video, with how generous Tom is by not just trashing the thing and giving them all the benefits of the doubt, I could be convinced this was in some way a grant money sink or similar, because there is no way this is all a company could come up with if hobbyists can make better solutions as individuals. I mean really, talk about a thing that has no reason to be. I kept waiting for some selling point a business would care about, but it's obvious their training material cant be good if the printer isn't even finished, QC clearly isn't there, and it feels stuck in 2015, so I got nothing.

19:03 that bread got some thick…. erm veins? 😅

Aint no way Thomas just did a "TF2 meet the sniper" style intro I LOVE IT XD

Yes, finally someone said it, if they don't publish the price, it's a scam!!!

Wow, for €2500? Not a (pardon my french) chance. If you need a large build volume you'll be able to pick up an Orangestorm Giga for around that price once it hits retail, or a Prusa XL with dual print heads for less, or a small print farm of either Prusa MK4's or Bambu Lab P1P or P1S printers, which are going to be far more useful than this utter failure which will turn into a dust collector in a corner somewhere.

That's an... interesting test print there Tom.

really well done review. Very concise, but also very thorough. Nice work

I've got a Dagoma Neva that I got from their Kickstarter campaign in 2016 or something and watching this video.....weeelll, it appears they've not learned anything since 2016. The slicer? Oh, it's the exact same thing they got in 2016! Print head having the tendency of just clogging up for no good reason? I haven't been able to get mine to work and I've tried multiple times over the years! Wobbly rods and print head? Oh, yes, that was also an issue already in 2016! Their customer support was worse than useless, too. I have absolutely nothing positive to say about the company or their printers.

If I were looking to spend about $3k on a printer for my company, I'd probably just grab a few BBL or Prusa machines unless I needed some to print with some really exotic materials. Those machines cost less upfront, take less time to set up and are probably more reliable. There's also plenty of documentation from both companies and from the community on configuration and maintenance

i feel like most 'pro' printer that are FDM/SLA printers are just 3D printing company that has a really good salesman or liaison to government body or schools. They offer no more reliability, but offer better than average support network but will obviously cost you more for the luxury of being able to fix your printer. There is probably exception, markforge probably being one of them but in most cases pro just mean professional sales team

19:00 that sample print ... so veiny

It's a GTMAX that speaks French!!! Here in Brazil, there is a manufacturer (GTMAX) that calls its printers Pro, but they are basically the same as this one, many printed things still use Arduino Mega with ramps, some have Raspberry. and sell as professional printers. And they are extremely expensive.

Hi ! i'm French and over here, Dagoma has a bad reputation in hobby market thats why they have changed their target to international/Professional market..but still clowns

The differences between a "pro" level machine or tool and a consumer-level one is chiefly the longevity/durability of the pro version (they might be expected to be in use almost constantly), and the support available in terms of commissioning and use. Sounds like the Dagoma struggles a bit to meet the pro level expectations. Meantime, I have a hard time seeing this as any sort of improvement over say the Prusa XL or Bambu Labs X1C/E.

Putting Klipper onto it would be the best option. Oh and please exchange the horribly flimsy linear rods to get more speed and acceleration combined with quality. Hopefully that works a bit.

22:16 I had a sneaking suspicion that calculator said 5318008 on it at first glance, so I went back and confirmed that it did. Dirty boy 😝 To me, professional just means you get paid to do something, as in it's your profession (and you can think the hydraulic press channel for that SuperVinlin)

I've always asked myself what could be the difference between a Bambulax X1 (for example) and a professional printer that has 5 or 10 times the price. But i hope the next time you review a serious one (a raise3D for example, or everything else deserving the "pro" adjective). While watching this Dagoma, after half of the video, i was keeping asking myself who would buy it....80 degrees build plate, slow printing, no manual, crappy menu translation, crappy Cura version (and so on...) for 3000 euro? are you kidding me? Now i know why i stick to buying german cars...

if that's a "pro" machine then i'm god. 3d printed parts all over, pretty much stock firmware, and the printed hotend assembly is even tearing in the layer lines. this machine right here is the absolute perfect example of why i don't mind bambulab being closed source.

I love tinkering, but for professional use, I need something that works, consistently and no tinkering needed. Part of me will miss fixing and tinkering with my CR10. But now that I am moving to production of my work…something like the Bambu printer is what I need. It has been a game changer. Once day once I have a bit more of time. I will go back to my CR10 to tinker and get my nerd fix. But until then..I need the result I am getting with something better.

How are there no comments about that intro? The correct music, quoting more than just the one line everyone knows, and it's actually relevant to the content of the video. Very nice, now excuse me while I go rewatch Meet the Team

Thank you Thomas for doing this review. This serves as a great warning to others. Forgoe this and use that same 3k to buy 5 to 6 Bambu lab P1S or if you truly need the 500mm height buy a Comgrow t500 or wait for the Elegoo Gigastorm orange.

OMG very compatible with the corner of any room though i love the dual fan design

Um for that price, I’d be angry if this was what I received and expected a “professional” machine. A Bambi X1C or P1S (I own a P1S) to me, is a far superior machine for half to 1/3 the cost.

A bit of feedback for your editor: the in-video text flashes too fast in some scenes some sort of an audio indicator about it would also be welcome (not a loud chime, but a small beep, maybe?)

19:06 ohhh it's a baguette! I thought it was something else...

At work we should go professional, not a creality so it ended up in a creatbot DE, it’s slow unknown in forums, slicer has no profile for it and it’s boden 2.85mm filament, the filament act like sofa spring when rolled up and PLA cracks in the tubes. I’m happy to have 4 different consumers printers at home proving the hobby can be useful. Else I’m afraid it would have crushed my 3D printer spirit.

The only professional part of this printer is their logo printed on it's side 😂

Love the Tf2 reference in the intro 😄

I recently purchased a 2nd hand Massportal printer. Amazing build quality. Still working on klipperizing it as no time at the moment.

Reminds me a bit of my first printer, Trium3D, a kickstarter delta printer

I mean, just get the Qidi Max 3 and it is a much better "industrial" machine if that's how you're defining this one. the Qidi can reach 120C on the bed and is closed with an active heated chamber which allows it to print tough materials without much problems. Yeah it would be really difficult to print ULTEM or high-grade polymers but it can do well with most engineering materials.

Wow, new printer just straight from 2014!

That is not a baguette. Thomas explain yourself. Great video. Keep up the good work.

Very interesting review, if you could review more of these professional level machines it would be awesome.

There’s the third type of Pro which is to get sell you a product in order to get the buyer to bring in consultants because the thing is made way more complicated than necessary.

I think they just made a fancy cabinet in CAD then dug around to find parts to fit in it. That is not what I would call a professional grade machine. I would have expected linear rails given the flex those 1000mm long rods will have. I'm guessing the tool with the hardened nozzle has a different thermistor but why not just use the high temp thermistor on the other hotend to avoid re-flashing Marlin ? Seems like that have no real engineering to back their product.

This is a very odd choice to evaluate what a professional level printer is. Regardless, after watching the video, it seems fair to say this printer is less "Pro" than an Ender 3 Pro. Every single aspect of the experience looked worse than my experience with a $100 Ender 3 Pro from Micro Center that I bought years ago.

Thomas, Long time fan, been watching since I found your channel in college (2016) when I was printing on my Robo3D R1+. Thank you for all the information you have put into the world for free, you have been an immense asset to myself and so many others. I have a small business where I 3d print custom items, often multi-color. Currently using a Banbulab X1C with 4-AMS, about to switch to PrusaXL for increased reliability of color changes, decreased waste and more transparency and adjustability in the machine and software itself. Would love to know your thoughts on the 5-tool XL before I pull the trigger (video, blog, anything really). If not, no worries at all. Again thank you for your years of well-thought-out opinions, analysis and advice. Your careful approach has always set you above the crowd of 3d printing youtubers in my eyes, and I look forward to videos from you for years to come. Respectfully, -BF3DPrinting

love that sniper quote at the start :D

In my experience 'professional' means locked down. When working in a regulated environment (aviation, medical devices) sometimes you need the ability to lock settings down but imo companies take it too far or as an excuse to not build out features. I think you'd be surprised at the lack of features in stratasys's grabcad. Most professional machines also tend to require a tech to install and setup the machine no matter how easy it is due to warranties and other reasons.

superbe vidéo , belle machine .....

In the same pricebracket a Formlabs Form 3+ is just a plug&play monster. There's onboarding on the machine, there's loads of documentation both text and video and the slicer, while limited in features (hello, where's my hollowing and holes? I suppose it presumes your model is FINAL before importing) really is just plug & play. You choose the resin & layer height and it will do everything for you, including sending the print over wifi even to printers on ANOTHER CONTINENT through the cloud dashboard. In my several month long history with the printer for work I've had about 1% failure rate on prints and it's been going almost non stop. Truly a professional work horse.

Printings a good job mate!

great content as always ! i found the same for the Raise machines .. they are heavily promoted but when we got one as a business, and tried to get customer support they denied it as apparently customer support is only in USA.. we had to heavily modify the printer, the bed, the head etc. Just to get it working ok. There were a lot of design flaws, and you can see it on the forums, Raise is usually blaming the customer and stalling them asklign stupid quiestions and askign to provide gcode and files then they 'rep[licate' and find no problems saying its users fault etc. When next - after some tiem they release new model with all features that were lacking added - but so poorly they even worse now.. I can go on for ages. but yes someone should do honest reviews like you do and show that. FOR ME THE PRO PRINTER IS : Ready to go when powered on. Have spares of all cosumables ready to go. Comes with Oil glue , etc. And instructions on how to use and what not to do + sample filament and print on the memory ready to go to test the machine !

Love the TF2 reference, even the music hehe

Hope you get hold of the upcoming Flsun printers soon

I'm surprised that print you were holding didn't get you demonetized :-)

That belt tension thingy looks just like the one Prusa posted on the prusament printables account, released under CC 4.0 (attribution-non commercial-no derivatives). Under that distribution with attribution to the designer in any form is legal; tossing a free one in the box when someone buys a printer may well be arguably OK but there should be some indication of where the design came from. This is assuming that it is the design produced by Prusa (or a modification thereof) of course, this video doesn't give a clear enough look at it to see if it is the Prusa belt tension thingy or a very similar one developed by Dagoma.

The question is really, what is a "pro" 3D printer. Some may argue that as long as you use it professionally it's pro, others may argue that it has to be something made by the giants in the 3D printing realm, such as Stratasys. As someone who had experience with hobby, mid range and proper professional 3D printers (that cost 20 times more than the one in this video), it's not an easy line to draw in the sand. If you work professionally and time is money honestly there is a huge draw to companies like Stratasys. While the cost is eye watering, even for their consumables, their printers just tend to work, and provide great results, and they have good support (in my experience) when things do go south. Our printers run for thousands of hours a year though, so the more robust the printer is, and the more hands off we can be, the better. Their cost is quickly offset. I simply haven't seen any of these mid range printers coming anywhere near close to compete with that, and for that reason I at least have a hard time calling them pro. Though, I can see fab labs, or companies who only do the occasional print every now and then benefiting greatly from them, as they don't have the business case for more expensive printers.

the printers I have used at my company usually come with someone that has to come on site and perform install and setup. This tracks with no assembly manual but the company seems to small to actually facilitate that. (this has primarily been with Stratasys, Markforge, EOS, and SLM machines, the last 2 of which are L-PBF metal machines so in a bit of a different league to start)

imagine dealing with delta artifacts in the year of our lord 2024

I was running 2 very similar equipped deltas from a Kickstarter.. Trium.. ( Also Marlin and octoprint) Got them to acceptable / much better performance after reflushing to klipper. Shouldn't be to hard to do.

Pro usually means that it has a CE Declaration that allows "unattended professional use" = The case is from Dibond or Sheet Metal.

Your face expression whilst homing is priceless 😂 Using an absolutely outdated version of Cura is an absolute no go. For me it doesn’t seem to be a professional, but rather like beta hobbyist level of a printer. I can’t really imagine that it will be selling well.

Way nice of a review. I'd have boxed it up and sent it back. I'd sooner run 3 Bambu X1 Carbons for that. AND have fast, high quality prints in almost any material.

Thank you for blessing us with the "Meet The Sniper" voice line...

Love the TF2 Sniper intro, ;)

Haha, my 2 year old voron 2.4 looks just the same, still. I DO have side panels, to print ASA, and I don't have a lidl clamp holding up the z-axis. But the rest is identical.

did you season the hot end and tube. a little 3in one oil with filament helps

Nice Bgm 😉

id love to see it this printer work better. hardware wise it looks like it has potential

I have used the Makerbot Method. i have used Ultimaker 3s. I have use a Stratasys Fortis. And every time it's been a disappointment. Not that they didn't work. They worked fine. "But for the price" is my mantra. And "for the price" these "pro" priced machines are not delivering a pro experience. The only one I used that I was not disappointed with was Raise 3D, and that was with their N2+. Then they restructured, named it the N2Pro, and doubled the price of it. But it's still a good machine for the size. (Better than this, IMHO.) Now we're living in a Post Bambu world. And I'll be darned if they didn't set the standard for power and price that even these pro machines need to take note of. Props for the Team Fortress 2 nod.

That is a one well sized baguette you got there.

I guess the 'a bit outdated' model is still nice and professional for beeing a stepping-stone for the more customized models for 'the real printers' with other beds and extra heat for the chambers and second extruder which can be much more expensive but still using the same start-base. Heated chamber, fan and filter on top... just customer-installed things and supported by Octoprint and some basic interface. Of course with just a small firmware-change you can upload to the printer from within Octo in a couple of minutes, you can change a lot of values too and just have the printer setup by Dagoma at your shop? Probably also using another payed subscription for a professional slicer... Sooo many times I have seen tools for professionals that worked that way. Starting with 'very affordable' to customized and much more expensive fast. That " startthingy" is then just to attract people as potential customers that get a support-contract to do all for them. Of course if anything is wrong, you can just swap out the whole printhead fast, ship the 'old' one to the factory and get another one back ready to go. But... what is that you were printing and holding in 'skin color'?

I would pick a core-XY printer with a larger print area than having such a tall print height. The speed along with the rigidity of the core-XY motion system will be much better to print out large number of parts quickly.

18:25 I hope that's a baguette

For me Professional means reliability and support (might require licence but must be available) Thats why for all my power tools i use bosh professional - i need tools to be reliable.

You did print a baguett on french maschine! 👌😂

nice idea printing a baguette. also what calculation did you do on that calculator?

I love the idea of these "professional grade" machines, and then comparing them against my X1Carbon and realizing, my X1 is like the best printer ever made.

I haven't even gotten to the end of the video and I'm having flashbacks. My first printer years ago was a Dogma Neva and it was a struggle 😭. They tried to have a factory and office here in the US. While I was fighting with this printer to work that location closed and I would have to send the printer to France to get it fixed. 😭 I ended up trashing the printer and getting an ender 3 later.

That lower control panel bezel (the whole black piece) wiggles around every-time you touch the thing... that bugs me. 😃 Funny that you chose to print a loaf of French bread on a French machine. 😃

Thomas, seeing this machine - would You use Your good relation with Prusa and actually test Prusa HT90? And try printing with PEI, huge ABS parts, Nylon etc? That machine has quite impressive specs for 8k Euro. Similar machines from other OEMs cost 2-3 times more :( But its unreachable for us hobbyists - so it would be nice to have a test from You, who we all trust :)

Nice calculator easter-egg! :D

Thanks for this. I'd love to see how "real" professional printers, like something from the Stratasys F170 or F370 line, hold up in a Thomas-Review. I know the F370 will cost you about 10x the price of a fully built 5 toolhead Prusa XL. How good must these professional printers be, to justify that pricetag? I doubt Stratasys would send you a review unit, but maybe you can get to them at a tradeshow and try to see for yourself if and how they are actually better (or the same old tech with a fancy company logo and locked down firm- and hardware).

I really wanted to see something here that would make me go "oh, yeah, that's the difference" - Maybe, like, superior service, no fuss operation, etc.... This printer wouldn't even cut it as a consumer printer for $999, honestly... I don't understand why it exists, unless they offer 100% lifetime service for that price. Like, dude... I see the pillowing on the printed parts from here! Thanks for an interesting video, though, Thomas.

I would like to see this in comparison to Prusas new “professional” deltas. I have looked at them on their website but don’t understand why they exist

Professional to me is a higher level of quality, finer tolerances, better after sales and better durability. These days in the 3d printing space I feel that professional is all about non-filament printing and batch printing. Sure ultimaker are selling pro filament printers, but are they really better in this day and age for the price?

Pro should mean -> support and reliability. Pro for 3000 Euros means -> very good support and very reliable, which is vital for small companies using this. This is seriously lacking in both these things which I totally don't understand. I do get the high price, small companies in Europe can't really mass produce, but then you definitely need something clever that people can admire.

13:27 Dual vertical monitor gang rise up. 2 4k monitors one on top of each other has been a new world for me for productivity all without that asymmetrical neck pain Id been developing as a developer with the ol main and side monitor setup. I keep mine right next to each other so its like a have a big canvas and endless ways to organize. If you use windows I highly recommend you give powertoys a try. Window organization will be next level.

You can get the Elagoo Giga for that price. Almost twice if you bought the kickstaret early bird.