3D Printing Guinness World Record Try by LeTourneau University

[Geoff]

They are not all printing the same thing. I don't think the record really matters whether it is the same thing or not. If it matters, we can easily do the same thing though, we just load the same file on every printer. In the video we are printing RepRap parts for our next generation TAZ. We've printed hundreds of thousands of parts. Printing some medallions simultaneously won't be hard--in fact, it will be easier.If you really want to see the nitty gritty of what we are printing, we have a LibreOffice spreadsheet of our current production batch here:
LulzBot TAZ Part Production
Thanks,
-Jeff

Fair enough, I havent actually checked up on the Guinness rules for such a thing, I suppose I was just saying it's not as impressive as them producing the same item, as all that is required to beat your record is simply plug in 1 more machine and run it (if they had as many as you guys do)

I'll keep looking out for the record for most printers printing an identical item, because unless each one comes out at a reasonable quality, what's the point of the record? Awesome you guys have so many printers, I mean who wouldn't kill for a line-up like that, but simply having them all running at the same time doesn't seem all that difficult, especially if they are printing different parts. Am I making sense? It's sort of like turning on 200 bubblejet printers and having them all print out a different image...

perhaps I need another coffee...

[jebba]

To be honest, I don't quite follow your argument. I quite assure you it is easier to print all of the same thing than a whole variety of things. On the TAZ machines there, which was what made up the large majority of the machines in the video, we printed about 22 different parts. You can see the parts list here:
LulzBot TAZ 3D Printer Parts Printed on a LulzBot TAZ 3D Printer Source Code
We did consider printing all the same thing yesterday, but we didn't want to halt production of actual parts because we figured it didn't matter, and it would interrupt the schedule. We're doing this weekdays during business hours. But if Guiness says it all has to be the same, then we'll just do that--that won't be a problem.
Thanks for your consideration,
-Jeff

[jebba]

OMFG, they did 108. We beat them by one. Crazy. We weren't even going to run them all, glad we did!
http://www.ktre.com/story/25168394/a...d-record-in-3d

[Brian_Krassenstein]

Actually they set the record at 102. They had 108 in the room, but only 102 of them functioned properly.

[Geoff]

To be honest, I don't quite follow your argument. I quite assure you it is easier to print all of the same thing than a whole variety of things. On the TAZ machines there, which was what made up the large majority of the machines in the video, we printed about 22 different parts. You can see the parts list here:
LulzBot TAZ 3D Printer Parts Printed on a LulzBot TAZ 3D Printer Source Code
We did consider printing all the same thing yesterday, but we didn't want to halt production of actual parts because we figured it didn't matter, and it would interrupt the schedule. We're doing this weekdays during business hours. But if Guiness says it all has to be the same, then we'll just do that--that won't be a problem.
Thanks for your consideration,
-Jeff

I guess I come from an older school of Guinness records where something major needs to be done to get a record, in your case you just ran your day to day operations - which to some might not seem like alot of effort for a record, that's why printing the same thing and actually having some form of rules to the record seems a bit more appropriate for a Guinness record, but I guess for the moment you can sleep at night

[jebba]

I guess I come from an older school of Guinness records where something major needs to be done to get a record, in your case you just ran your day to day operations - which to some might not seem like alot of effort for a record, that's why printing the same thing and actually having some form of rules to the record seems a bit more appropriate for a Guinness record, but I guess for the moment you can sleep at night

Should the amount of effort matter or the record itself? It seems the effort is irrelevant to whether the record is achieved. That said, we have 3+ years of solid work and effort to get us to this place.
I agree the record should have some sort of rules--I don't have any problem with that. If we have to print the same thing, that will be no problem--it will be easier. Again, we'll have to see what Guinness themselves say, but whatever standard they set, I'm sure we can meet it.
-Jeff

[jebba]

As a side note, Terry Wohlers, of the definitive Wohlers Report just wrote me and said "This could very well be a world record". He has been all over the world working in the additive manufacturing industry for 20+ years. He's a great source as he's probably seen more printer setups than anyone. At least he hasn't seen anything bigger.
-Jeff

[jnesselr]

How do you guys run all of those printers? I am a developer for botqueue.com, which allows you to control multiple 3d printers, and that would be a lovely stress test after the 0.5 version is released.

It seems like it takes a lot of bandwidth to run all of those bots. How do you guys run them all?

~ Justin Nesselrotte

[Geoff]

Should the amount of effort matter or the record itself? It seems the effort is irrelevant to whether the record is achieved. That said, we have 3+ years of solid work and effort to get us to this place.
I agree the record should have some sort of rules--I don't have any problem with that. If we have to print the same thing, that will be no problem--it will be easier. Again, we'll have to see what Guinness themselves say, but whatever standard they set, I'm sure we can meet it.
-Jeff

A bit of both I suppose I just grew up remembering when someone broke a Guinness record it was a big thing, or something that you couldn't do on a normal day. Hopefully your video will compel others to try and top it, I would like to see it done with say, 150 people all coming together and putting their machines into it, that would be cool.

Mainly I refer to the article on it, where they say they were all printing the same commerative coin, perhaps the fact they were doing that means it was stipulated in the rules, who knows, I guess you'll find out soon enough from Guinness.

"The Guinness World Record has accepted our record application to create this new international world record and claim the title, if we are successful," said LETU Dean of Engineering Dr. Ron DeLap. "We expect to make history."
The student engineering team tried to get at least 50 3D printers printing the same commemorative coin simultaneously during the public 3D printing demonstration event held at 3 p.m. Friday, April 4, in the Solheim Arena of the Solheim Recreation Center on the LETU campus, 2100 S. Mobberly Ave.

[jebba]

How do you guys run all of those printers? I am a developer for botqueue.com, which allows you to control multiple 3d printers, and that would be a lovely stress test after the 0.5 version is released.It seems like it takes a lot of bandwidth to run all of those bots. How do you guys run them all?

For the older AO-100s, we just had a lot of USB and would have one computer running pronterface drive ~15 or so. For the TAZ, we are putting Beagle Bone Blacks on all of them, and we control them via OctoPrint. We are familiar with Botqueue, but we haven't run it on the cluster. Perhaps we could re-visit that.
Thanks!
-Jeff