Looking at one for work, currently we send out stuff to Sub Contractors with the latest greatest machines (usually £200ish for a part but they are excellent and pretty fast, usually next day) but I am wondering if we are missing a trick with some of the cheaper MakerBot style machines? Dx have them from £265! RS are selling the latest MakerBot for about £2k. If we had it in house and cheap maybe we could use it more, at £200 a pop for the externally sourced stuff you have to think twice as the bills can rack up.
Have spent a couple of hours and the online reviews go between nerds who love them (maybe because they like to tinker with stuff) and professional designers who find them a pain because they don't work without tinkering so can't be relied on.
Anyone any real world experience of using them for work parts, thinking new designs, manufacturing jigs etc.?
Thanks for any input.
Aaron
We've had a few of them to tinker with, but most are toys compared to proper machines.
We have an old HP designjet/Stratsys model and it works pretty much flawlessly every time. not cheap, but then it's not £200k expensive either.
Thanks Daffy
That's close to what I am thinking at the minute. The HP m/c is around £12-£14k so may be our best bet. Think the Stratsys one is closer to £20k but may make us look like less of an idiot!
Fancy building one of the home brew units though, an extruder head seems to be about £50 and there are some hacked ones on line built out of old printers etc. Can see it being a massive time drain though!
I've got my eye on this one:
[url= http://printrbot.com/shop/simple-metal-kit/ ]Printrbot Simple metal[/url]
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But it's still not quite as cheap or as accurate and faff-free as I would consider to be the minimum spec for me personally
(mostly as a play thing to join Lego Mindstorms, scratch, etc for me to play with my sons).
Went to a 3D print exhibition at Manchester Science Museum the other day and it's amazing how many of the models were just downloaded nonesense from the internet. The 3D printed Ti bike from Empire was interesting though.
That looks interesting Alex.
Quite a nice SCARA robot version on Kickstarter [url= https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/535786699/flxarm-low-cost-precision-robotic-arm ]
Nice to see alternate ways of doing the xyz motion.
Have a MakerBot replicator Mini for work.
Head has had to be returned before anything has been printed beyond a plastic nipple, due to a known issue that stops it working so not impressed thus far.
We're fiddling with one of these at the moment.
[url= http://www.ioncoretechnology.com/zinter/zinter-pro/ ]Ion Core Zinter Pro[/url] and whilst it's nice, it fails almost as often as it builds.
If you sign up to bikeguide forum G sport george has been tinkering with one for a while.
oh - that reminds me!Nice to see alternate ways of doing the xyz motion.
I designed a couple of parts for a company making a version of this design (they were trying to improve the chassis stiffness).
When I saw how the XYZ axis were handled I was fascinated. Especially with the use of 3 identical transports.
I thought they might send me a sample when it's ready, but I think the printer will be almost £1000 so maybe not.
Daffy like the look of those! Probably suffer from the same issues as all the others due to the overall cheapness of the build I suppose but it is very nicely packaged!
Alex - a Delta style robot is lovely, I use them in some of our production machines and I can stand and watch them for hours! See a few versions available as 3D printers but nothing mainstream that I could see to compete with MakerBot types. Very fast motion so I can see how it may make a faster print.
AlexSimon - MemberWent to a 3D print exhibition at Manchester Science Museum the other day and it's amazing how many of the models were just downloaded nonesense from the internet.
A guy I know has a small company that make well finished, well engineered small printed parts for a couple of niche jobs. But he makes his actual money making printed minecraft bollocks
Not surprised. I always stumble at the 'what would I actually make with it' phase of pre-purchase sanity-checking 🙂
Whereas a CNC router - capable of doing full sheets - now that...
We've had a selection of the low cost ones at the Uni where I work, for students to tinker with. Many of the machines have small print volumes, low resolution and are painfully slow; the running costs can be quite high too, especially if you print solid components; "failed" prints are also way too common. We've ended up with a number of Makerbots of various vintages; not % reliable yet, but good enough.
At my old place we had a Stratys and an HP which was about £15k. Both good machines for the money. We used them for making samples to send to factories in china and to prototype moving parts. A mate had a £2k model can't remember the make and it was shit, only really of use for making novelty items, too slow by far and the printed materials were of an obviously low dpi. It failed twice when he was showing me and he said he'd had issues with people closing doors etc and causing the machine to vibrate.
Thanks King O, coming to that conclusion. If I can't get budget for a higher end one will keep outsourcing.
Cheers
A
The Up! printer we have at school is pretty good. Better than the kit RepRap which is a pain in the arse to calibrate. The Up auto calibrates/levels and prints well most of the time. It can 'ghost' print if it overheats - but most of the time it works pretty well.
Depends on what print quality and size you need really. As most if the cheaper ones are limited to a 150x150mm cube max. And that size would take ages!
Best use we've found for ours - well apart from making fun key rings - is printing models for sand casting in aluminium. Much easier and more accurate than hand made models.
The school where I work has just bought a up mini 3-d printer. Personally I believe it isn't great, we've had nothing but problems with it. It takes a long time to print and quality is poor. Like ajantom said, it does auto calibrate however we have had problems with it starting to print and then deciding it wants to finish the model elsewhere, ending up with two half models.
Customer service was good, we contacted den ford who came straight out to sort the issue, however it failed agin almost straight away.
I'm looking forward to the day when metal laser sintered machines hit the domestic market. Probably some way off mind you, but it will happen.
Ha, Steve, George is my mate and I opened this thread to post about his printer. It's a reprap and pretty good. He's looking to build a Mendel 90 next.
He's build me some bits like GoPro light mind and stuff, works quite well and meets his needs. They can be built for under £300 now but involve lots of DIY and setup. Result he gets now are great!
Work have a Stratasys machine that is old but far better - should be for 50 x the price!
We use makerbots at work. Once you've had them a while, you work around their quirks, and you know what... They're bloody good.
I've used them for all sorts, from prototyping/conceptualising through to using them for production parts. For business use they are very very cheap to run compared with one off machined metal prototypes.
We have three, sometimes we have all three running... Making batches of part location tooling for some rather large customers.
They're also great to take onsite with a laptop - instant prototyping and or production brackets etc... On custom installations. One of them has been taken all over the place and is still working great.
They certainly have their quirks, and you need to understand their limitations, but its surprising what you can do with them. Brackets, covers, touch screen mounts, location tooling.... They've completely changed the way we do some things.
They do get used for the odd personal project too... Coffee cup holders for the brew machine run, map board mounts, custom light brackets, chain guide, bike lock mounting bracket, in car phone holders, raspberry pi cases etc....
Why did someone have to post about a £300 3D printer. It actually looks pretty good too with some DIY! So tempted, not tempted, looking to buy. 😉
Prusa i3 looks good.
I'm very tempted - can print your own upgrades to the printer too!
So many different Prusa i3's to choose from, would really like a recommendation!
I like the ability to upgrade it to keep it up-to-date. Damn you Gravity-Slave! 😉
G has lots of experience with what I think is a Prusa Mendel. He's going to go for a Mendel 90 next time - http://reprap.org/wiki/Mendel90
I keep thinking it would be a good winter project, then realise how little time I have. If I do one, it'll be the one with the best instructions and easiest parts list.
The Mendel90 does look nice, but it's nearly twice the price of the i3 kits. 😯
Also found the i3 with a big bed, 270x200x170mm. Now need to find a decent site/forum so I know if its rubbish or not!
Could do with a couple of custom gopro mounts, chain guides and loads of other things I don't really need. 😉
The Mendel90 looks class, might have a go at that for home use!