UK TCT 2018 - This Week :-)

[curious aardvark]

Well this year things at TCT were different.

Considerably fewer exhibitors, no start-up section and they'd split the hall down the middle.
Go left and you're in normal printer country. Go right and it was just metal printers.

This resulted in 90% of the visitors all being in the left section at any given point with a few wandering aimlessly around the, mostly deserted, metal section.

Also for the first time it felt a lot more like a corporate show than previous years.
Usually at tct the people who run the company show up with their machines and goods.
This year there were a LOT more print bureaus, who were also serving double service as representatives for the machine manufacturers.

So 3DP had a few machines there, but weren't there in person.
In fact a number of the bigger manufacturers were just missing completely.
Whether this was a sign that the bubble has burst or that they now sell so well they don't need to go to the shows - I don't know.

The emphasis this year was definitely size.
Huge machines printing big objects with the emphasis on industrial applications and notable was the emphasis on a machine's ability to print with PEEK.
Got a picture of one machine running with 350c hotend and 250c heat bed.
Impressive piece of kit actually. idex extruders, rails and ball screws.

There were still the usual desktop resellers and filament merchants. I scored a couple of stick on build plate surfaces from www.lankeda.com, that i tried out on the i3 last night.
I think it's a form of buildtak - got to admit to being impressed with it so far.

Got some cool filament and my mate collected 18 pens and enough bags of sweets to keep his partner happy for a while :-)

But the whole atmosphere was quite different.
I'm fully expecting there to be booth bunnies there next year.

It's a solid indication of how the industry is changing.
Desktop machines are now so cheap that having a stall at tct could put a serious knock in your profits.

It's leaning more towards the standard corporate business model rather than the man in his garage building a product.

It's the way things have to be - but I'm still sad to see the start of the end of the small 3d printer company successfully fighting their corner.

There were considerably fewer deltas there this year, what were there, tended towards the larger size - one in particular standing at least 20 feet tall. Part of it was the delta specific companies just not being there.

Got a few pics and made a couple interesting contacts - and got free build surface for the ctc i3.

But for the first year we left before they kicked us out, and with a somewhat ambivalent feeling.
Desktop Additive manufacturing is growing up, and I'm not sure that's neccessarily a good thing.

[curious aardvark]

Heres one of the big printers. Modix big 60.

modexbig60.jpg

On of the few to give prices:

modixbig60price.jpg

Looking for the same build volume on a tiny budget ?
Technologyoutlet.co.uk have anew range of budget printers:

tachnologyoutlet bigmachines.jpg

After a quick perusal we all agreed that it needed some bracing on the upper gantry. So hopefully that'll be incorporated.
It's 600mm x 600mm x 600mm.
Not going to win any prizes - other than largest print volume for smallest amount of money.
But should do the job.

Talking about size and simplicity of build:

onebigdelta.jpg

Used aluminium extrusion and a basic three wheeled carriage setup with carbon fibre rods.

3wheelsbigdelta.jpg

It's essentially just a scaled up rostock. It was even using, what looked like, standard 6mm belts. Might have been 8 or 10 mm.
If the total bill for parts was more than a few thousand - I'd be very surprised.

[curious aardvark]

So on to possibly the simplest and coolest idea at the show.
Blackbelt printers. The only machine to incorporate the infinity symbol in their build volume :-)

blackbelt-small.jpg

Now the real clever thing is that the printhead is set at an angle.
This allows it to print out at right angles without supports.
Here's the big one:

big-blackbelt.jpg

Made-in-space have developed a similiar machine for making components on mars and in space.

When I find the sample print I got from the blackbelt I can show you how it prints horizontally without supports.

And essentially that was the non-metal printing side of tct 2018.