Looking for recommendations : Large-ish format, commercial printing

[curious aardvark]

You're going a very long way round.

You can simply either print with pla and use that for investment casting directy, or print in wax specifically designed for the purpose.

Clean that u and smooth it out and make the mould from that.

Otherwise you're going through three stages before you get the final metal oject. And at each stage you will lose detail.

Printed at a high resolution that would give you a much cleaner final model.

Also if you printed with this stuff: http://www.polymaker.com/home/polycast-info/
You can smooth it either with their gadget. Or smooth it yourself using (I think, isopropyl alcohol)

serious budget !
In which case there are a few more options.
worth looking at the form 2 - I know they make a castable resin.
not a massive print volume - around 6x6x7 inches
so probably not large enough.

Have a look at this one: http://www.solidator.com/news.html
As far as I can tell it's in your price range and also fits the specs and has castable resin. C
an only find one reviw that mentions cost, says $5'000-10'000
I really HATE companies that refuse to say what their kit costs and will only give you a quote. You damn well nobody gets the same quote.
Wouldn't normally recommend people like that - but there are very few sla machines around with that kind of build volume.

For what you want - I don't think fdm will suit.
The solidator looks like the best bet from what i can see around at the moment.
http://www.solidator.com/3D-Printer.html

[0maha]

You're going a very long way round.

Funny you should say that, because we are starting to come to the same conclusion.

The idea was that the printing itself would be the "long pole in the tent", and in the cases where we need to make multiple copies of a given piece, or spoilage downstream forces a re-work, we wanted to be able to re-make it without having to re-print.

The more we learn, the faster that assumption is going away.

Thanks to all for the feedback. We'll keep this updated as progress continues.