Printable View
If you could have anything in a printer what would it be?
Edit - I guess, why am I not seeing more artists buy 3d printers? Shapeways seems like a good short term solution but I'm going to be printing for a while and the cost of shapeways or 3dhubs much more expensive than just having a printer.
Well, that's super open-ended there, but I'll bite. The ability to have some measure of automated post-processing on a per-layer basis as the part is printing. Not necessarily a machining process like the ORNL hybrid manufacturing lab, but a light polishing or sanding process to smooth each layer as the print is built. A very large build area, not necessarily a whole room, but 4'x4'x4', large enough to print a table or chair in one piece.
And pump-style paste/clay extrusion with a heat gun/UV torch follower arm rather than heated plastic extrusion. Paste extrusion offers a huge array of material choices, but the current syringe style print heads for paste extrusion, adding a heat gun follower arm allows you to set a shell of clay/concrete/epoxy almost instantly, giving the material a better overhang handling ability, with a UV torch to cure photoresin slurries even more quickly than you can cure epoxy ones. Resin slurries have a great finish, and with the right fillers can make convincing granite substitutes when sanded and polished.
Am I dreaming big enough?
a tool that sands as you print? I don't think that's impossible, but there would be some issues - force sensitive sanding tool that can apply the right amount of force over the right amount of time without knocking the print off its bed, specially shaped sander to be able to adjust for different surfaces (vertical to horizontal transitions, which a sanding bulb could take care of), and the need for it to be able to dip above and below nozzle level.
Do you think 64 cbft. is a bit large? for any table or chair to be build in one piece there would have to be an insane amount of support material, and would take maybe more than a week to print. This may not matter; if I were to print an original modeled sculpture that large the cost and time probably wouldn't matter. It would have to have some of the same tech as stratasys machines, self-pausing when filament runs out, for instance.
I don't have any experience with those types of printers. I'll look into them a bit. Thanks for responding Feign.
I'm building a 3d printer right now and I'm trying to assess what the market for it is like. I've been getting good feedback from people but I've been trying to think what I can change to make it better. That sander would need some killer R&D.
Ah hah, well perhaps you should have asked wha twe would realistically want in a 3D printer. I figure cutting the build are down to 2'x2'x2' would make the thing more buildable. 64ft2 is big enough to print a room in 8-12 pieces, rather than most archetectural printers either taking a truly huge amount of time or requiring a significant amount of assembly. Even at half the size to a side, the thing would be a massive and expensive beast.Quote:
Originally Posted by biomedicalchemist
Most of the problems with running out of material are alleviated with certain kinds of paste extruder, since you can feed them from a top-mounted hopper rather than a fixed length filament reel, meaning there's no pause if you just keep the hoppers topped off as material is used.
Concepts like hybrid additive/subtractive manufacturing are pretty much beyond the cutting edge of the industry, only being used in some pretty well equipped labs. I included it because when a surface finishing process is included, you can get good looking prints even with very large layer heights. With smaller prints it becomes unnecessary.
The use of a heat gun assisted paste extrusion is something I've only ever seen on Dirk Vander Kooij's older prints, he has since moved on to printing in MIG-welded metal, but the earlier method still hits me as having a lot of potential.
I guess the best answer to the new question is that most artists, if they don't just use a printing service, manage to commission or build a specific costomized 3D printing irg rather than buying a consumer one. Kooij is a good example here, skipping the 3D printer format completely and using an industrial 6DOF robot arm to create large objects without consideration for overhang because it prints independant of gravity.
Little known fact: Overhang failure isn't due to gravity, but instead due to material pressure torquing itself off the layer. As long as the first layer sticks to the print bed, you can hang a printer upside down or sideways and it will continue printing just fine.
I think if I had said "for $2500" you wouldn't have answered me. :_{ expensive things always get cheaper. I'm going to figure out how to polish the sides of the prints as I go! haha. I'll see you in five years. if you want to check out what we have going on we're at lathon.net. I can see what you're saying; a lot of artists would readily build a machine themselves. I feel like that's half of the struggle/reward of making 3d printed art.
Thanks for your thoughts. What sort of printers do you work with?
As an artist myself, I think the reason more artists aren't buying these machines is due to a number of factors.
The build volumes are too small - on most affordable printers, it's difficult to find one that will make anything that can't be slipped into a pocket. Art galleries want larger things that won't walk off, and they are leery of things that can be produced in large quantities without the "artist's touch".
The learning curve is steep - artists don't want to have to spend a lot of time tweaking parameters just to have something print at all.
The surface quality is poor - unless someone finds that striated quality attractive.
Color is generally absent - you can basically just print in a single color.
Configurations are limited - although the promise of 3D printing is that "complexity is free" and anything can be printed, consumer-level FDM printers generally don't offer soluble supports, so the sorts of things that can actually be made are constrained by the need for the filament to have something to build on.
They are relatively expensive - while artists like to experiment with new things, art is not the most financially rewarding career imaginable, and disposable income is always in short supply. While $500 to $1500 isn't that much in absolute terms, it buys a lot of paint and canvas.
On the other hand, some artists (like myself) have caught the bug, and spend a lot of time and money struggling with all this stuff...
Andrew Werby
Juxtamorph.com
I work with some of the older 3D Systems machines on a local campus, and helped my friend build a RepRap Mendel. I personally haven't bought a printer for myself, but I've got a pledge in for a MOD-T and a Peachy Printer (and I have the kind of patience needed to not complain about realistic delivery times).
For $2500 you're in the portion of the market currently dominated by the Form 1 and the Makerbot Replicator. Pretty much either an extremely solid and professional machine or a decent number of gimmics is what you need to distinguish yourself enough to break into that market.
Or a big print area... People love to brag about size, yanno. ;)
EDIT: more seriously, surface quality is orders of magnitude more important to most artists than full color, as most artists would be more comfortable with a part that they must paint by hand than most consumers.
After some digging, the biggest print area commercially available is the BigRep, with a 1.3 m3 build area, or roughtly 46 ft3. Of course that one is going for around $40k, so it's well above and beyond what you're looking to sell.
Oddly enough, it's a filament-fed printer rather than pellet-fed, which seems like a very bad decision at that scale.