3D printers

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muchalucha
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Re: 3D printers

Post by muchalucha »

oooohh thats cool. certainly a lot prettier than the makerbot. The extruded plastic 3d printed parts ive seen are suprisingly strong to.
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Andrew_Hibberd
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Re: 3D printers

Post by Andrew_Hibberd »

Found this 3D printer for sale on RS. They are definatly comming down in price £499

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/3d-printers/7952333/
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peterwaller
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Re: 3D printers

Post by peterwaller »

That looks a good spec certainly as good as my UP but with a bigger build volume and one third of the price.
True it is in kit form but that is not necessarily a bad thing you must learn a lot from putting it together.
I like the sound of the auto levelling function if it works well, it can be a lengthy task on the UP to manually set it.
The biggest thing with all these 3D printers is how well the software works.
Also don't expect it to work perfectly every time on the larger items like a chassis I recon it takes me three to four attempts from scratch to get a chassis to print out exactly how I want it having to make slight design changes to overcome some of the deficiencies of the software/hardware.
Having said that they really are great devices and I can attempt things I couldn't make any other way.
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Re: 3D printers

Post by Remote-Controlled Dave »

Are home 3D printers fairly user friendly? Or is there lots of learning to be done if you're a noob with no experience of computer programming or hardware. Asking for a friend...
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EpicentrE
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Re: 3D printers

Post by EpicentrE »

Pete's tales of having to reprint things multiple times, working out the correct solutions to imbue them with for maximum strength, failed prints, working out support structures, etc, suggests to me that they're not. I don't think any home machines at the moment are going to match the speed, accuracy, affordability and simplicity of something like Shapeways - they more strike me as for people who want to tinker and do it themselves.
Scott Fyfe-Jamieson, Captain of Epic Robotics. Champion of AWS38/41/42.
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Re: 3D printers

Post by Remote-Controlled Dave »

That was my conclusion too Scott. Bear.
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peterwaller
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Re: 3D printers

Post by peterwaller »

In general Scot is right you certainly don't get the quality that is achievable with a powder based machine.
The software at least on the UP creates all the support structures automatically and in most cases very successfully but it can be difficult to remove in some inaccessible places. This means the design has to be done in such a way as to overcome this. Having said that the one place it does score is the saving of time. Even though at the time 2-4 hours to print a chassis seems slow, you can still get through a few iterations in a couple of days compared to about 10 days for Shapeways and where it really scores is when you find you have made a mistake in the design meaning a reprint and another 10 days and £30 on the Shapeways route.
All in all I am pleased with my printer I had already had some parts made on an UP before I bought it so I was aware of most of the limitations and once you have the design sorted repeat builds to replace damaged parts are straightforward.
As to cost I don't suppose I will ever recover the £1500 but once that cost is conveniently forgotten the running cost are quite low and as the picture below shows these 10 chassis would have been the best part of £300 at Shapeways.
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Re: 3D printers

Post by EpicentrE »

Maybe we just work in different ways; I don't think I've ever had to have something re-printed from Shapeways because I've made an error in the design, as I obsess over every tiny detail in my CAD designs. Maybe it's the other way round though; maybe I obsess over the details because the cost and time of a reprint from Shapeways discourages me from making mistakes. Either way, both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. I can certainly see the worth in being able to quickly and cheaply get a prototype made in order to test a concept, but for machines that are going to compete I'd always rather have the peace of mind that they were printed by professionals on a professional-grade machine, rather than by me on a hobby-grade machine, which would almost certainly mean the end result was lower quality.

There's also the time considerations. I don't have as much time to work on my robots as I'd like to, so I'd rather spend that time actually designing and building rather than tinkering and troubleshooting with my tools. Once again though, it's just a case of whatever works for you and brings you the most pleasure :).
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Re: 3D printers

Post by Andrew_Hibberd »

I have been thinking about getting a decent lathe, but a 3d printer would get more use. I don't want to spend a fortune but I want good detail in the parts.

What 3d printers do you guys have, what are the pros/cons would you recommend it or do you know of something else good on the market?

Andy
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Re: 3D printers

Post by Andrew_Hibberd »

What do people make of the Robox printer: http://robox.cel-uk.com/robox/rbx1.html
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