3DMonstr: Large, quad-extruder 3D printer on Kickstarter

[3dm]

I really appreciate your reply, I think you pretty much answered all my questions, and I totally understand not wanting to get into any legal discourse with SSYS right now, they are playing hard ball and I wouldn't want to get in the way at all! don't blame you.

The only thing I have to make note of,



I personally would be worrying about ABS. Makerbot are focusing on PLA, that's great, but it will and is becoming their complete undoing. You said Nylon? I'm sure you are aware of the melting temperatures required for Nylon? if your machine can do Nylon, it can do ABS - To NOT be able to print in these is going backwards!! machines have been doing it for years now, including mine and why would I buy a machine less capable than the one I already own? Makerbot want to to push PLA because it's harder for the average joe to make at home and they can make oddles of profit from it. ABS filastruders are out, people are making their own filament quite cheaply now, thats what Makerbot was afraid of, the whole push on PLA vs ABS is evil is purely a scaremonger tactic, probably dreamed up by Bre himself.

What does a heated bed element cost wholesale? $20? $30? not really a big outlay. This needs to be in the box, not an addon.

I'll leave you with this thought...

I didn't buy a Makerbot 2 because it couldn't print ABS out of the box. It wasn't a cost factor. I was prepared to spend $2800 - $3500 on a 3D printer, but found one for $1100 that did print PLA and ABS and did everything the makerbot did. The makerbot rep tried to sell me on PLA and convince me it was the best, but now after a year I am glad I went with my gut and bought a machine that can print in all filaments. HIPS, ABS, PLA, Nylon, Laywood3 - and it does, and it has.

I hear you Geoff. We're also getting similar feedback from several other experienced folks, like yourself. Accordingly, we're going to raise the priority of printing in ABS up for the production machines.

For T-Rex-12 we have a couple of off the shelf options:
- Pannucatt (Azteeg vendor) has an 8"x8" PC-board, and I think Roy was showing a 12"x12" bed as well: http://www.panucatt.com/product_p/hbp200.htm I don't know what the cost of the 12" board will be, but I think it's probably reasonable ($50-$60?? maybe.)
- The silicone pads that a lot of folks use (like QU-BD, for example: http://store.qu-bd.com/product.php?id_product=29 at about $60+). Similar pads abound on Ebay for $40 shipped.

But for the larger machines, when we did the research in the Spring of this year, we heard numbers like $500-600 for custom pads plus additional power supplies (another $50) and the need to engineer a temperature control solution. That was the problem that stumped us. And given that we were hearing a strong "don't care about ABS" from the folks we were talking to at the time, we looked into how to go about solving this ourselves, and when we came up with a solution that looked reasonable after first-order analysis we shelved it for future reference.

So having heard how strongly folks feel about it, we're going to move this task up in the queue and address the issue sooner. I don't yet know when we'll have a prototype, but we will have this for production machines, one way or another.

[Geoff]

I hear you Geoff. We're also getting similar feedback from several other experienced folks, like yourself. Accordingly, we're going to raise the priority of printing in ABS up for the production machines.

For T-Rex-12 we have a couple of off the shelf options:
- Pannucatt (Azteeg vendor) has an 8"x8" PC-board, and I think Roy was showing a 12"x12" bed as well: http://www.panucatt.com/product_p/hbp200.htm I don't know what the cost of the 12" board will be, but I think it's probably reasonable ($50-$60?? maybe.)
- The silicone pads that a lot of folks use (like QU-BD, for example: http://store.qu-bd.com/product.php?id_product=29 at about $60+). Similar pads abound on Ebay for $40 shipped.

But for the larger machines, when we did the research in the Spring of this year, we heard numbers like $500-600 for custom pads plus additional power supplies (another $50) and the need to engineer a temperature control solution. That was the problem that stumped us. And given that we were hearing a strong "don't care about ABS" from the folks we were talking to at the time, we looked into how to go about solving this ourselves, and when we came up with a solution that looked reasonable after first-order analysis we shelved it for future reference.

So having heard how strongly folks feel about it, we're going to move this task up in the queue and address the issue sooner. I don't yet know when we'll have a prototype, but we will have this for production machines, one way or another.

Thanks for the detailed answer, I wish all prospective sellers were as researched. Personally, I am looking for a machine that can build large straight, long parts. Currently I am limited to an 8.66 inch build length, and really need between 12 and 16" for the quad and hexa copter parts I make.

The reason I also need the heated bed is because to keep PLA, ABS or anything for that matter straight, both while printing and after printing, you need heat.. if I don't have heat the parts warp after printing, which means it needs to spend days in the curing box getting heated and straightened, and quadcopter arms need to be dead straight. So yeah, I am looking for a machine that can say, print a long flat arm, say 1.5cm in height, 12" long.. at minimum 50%infill and not have it lose shape when I take it off the bed..

So yeah thats what im shopping for at the moment