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

[NJ_Lifer]

Just saw this today. It's yet another 3D Printer trying to get funding on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-extruder-3d-p). This one actually has some differences than a lot of the printers on the market today. This one is very large.

The price starts at $2499, which isn't bad for a printer this size:

How is 3DMonstr Unique?

3DMonstr has many capabilities rolled into one powerful machine.

• Its build volume is impressive. The smallest of its family is 1 cubic foot; the middle is 3.375 cubic feet, the largest is 8 cubic feet.
• It has four independent extruders, each with its own temperature control
• You can print small things on a big printer, but you can't print big things on a small one. That's why, whether you're printing large or small, we want to make sure that you could do so in fine resolution style, printing 40 micron layers.
• The extruders are attached to the machine via a QuickMount release making it really easy to switch them in and out and trivial to adjust their height. Just drop the extruder to the glass and go.
• 3DMonstr was built to last. It's like no 3D printer you've seen before. Made from industrial grade materials, it's incredibly sturdy and rigid. When people see this printer, they say, "Now this is serious."
• 3DMonstr printers are designed for future growth and built to last through rapidly changing technology. We wanted to build a structure that could push the limits of what future technology can throw at it because we want to be able to print more than plastic. After Kickstarter is over and the machines have been delivered, our focus will be on advanced extruders. That's why we needed to make sure we had a structure that could handle strong materials and high thermal stress.
• One of the biggest, ongoing frustrations and complaints of 3D printer users is the calibration process. It's not the kind of big we were going for, so we took the calibration solution a step further, and instead of trying to make calibration easier, we eliminated the problem by designing a large part of the problem right out of the printer.
• A nice touch is that 3DMonstr is foldable. This way, if you don't have a large workspace, you can fold it flat and tuck it away. You can also quickly remove the gantry from the table bed for easy transport. It comes apart and can be put together with no tools, in just a couple of minutes.

Quick Specs for 3DMonstr


Size & Weight



Mechanics

[NJ_Lifer]

What do you guys think? Worth the money?

[Geoff]

Nope sorry. Without an enclosure, there is no way it is going to print the height that it claims without serious warping issues or headaches. It looks gigantic and impressive but if you actually look at the printer in the picture, the big build is only around 22cm (look at the stepper motor, its around 4.2cm high, if you multiply the height in the photo by steppers, you can average around 20cm that the nozzle is currently at) and has not finished yet, so I'd be keen to see their 24" cubic build, like an entire helmet or something printed in one go.

Also the build platform... Glass plate? no heating element? How on earth would they make a 24" high model without a heated bed and no enclosure? if it can this certainly is a magic machine!

[DrLuigi]

Nope sorry. Without an enclosure, there is no way it is going to print the height that it claims without serious warping issues or headaches. It looks gigantic and impressive but if you actually look at the printer in the picture, the big build is only around 22cm (look at the stepper motor, its around 4.2cm high, if you multiply the height in the photo by steppers, you can average around 20cm that the nozzle is currently at) and has not finished yet, so I'd be keen to see their 24" cubic build, like an entire helmet or something printed in one go.

Also the build platform... Glass plate? no heating element? How on earth would they make a 24" high model without a heated bed and no enclosure? if it can this certainly is a magic machine!

Well it could print PLA, but ye without heating element it will be still tricky :P

for that price they could have been more complete.
Also perhaps a few extra hotends attached.

[3dm]

Well it could print PLA, but ye without heating element it will be still tricky :P

for that price they could have been more complete.
Also perhaps a few extra hotends attached.

Hi, DrL, see above for more detailed discussion about the PLA/ABS and heated bed/enclosure.
I'm curious about what you mean by " a few extra hotends attached"? Can you please elaborate?

[DrLuigi]

Hi, DrL, see above for more detailed discussion about the PLA/ABS and heated bed/enclosure.
I'm curious about what you mean by " a few extra hotends attached"? Can you please elaborate?

I meant to perhaps get a second Hotend on it so you can use 2 diffrent materials/colors etc.

[3dm]

Nope sorry. Without an enclosure, there is no way it is going to print the height that it claims without serious warping issues or headaches. It looks gigantic and impressive but if you actually look at the printer in the picture, the big build is only around 22cm (look at the stepper motor, its around 4.2cm high, if you multiply the height in the photo by steppers, you can average around 20cm that the nozzle is currently at) and has not finished yet, so I'd be keen to see their 24" cubic build, like an entire helmet or something printed in one go.

Also the build platform... Glass plate? no heating element? How on earth would they make a 24" high model without a heated bed and no enclosure? if it can this certainly is a magic machine!

Just joined. Thanks for the feedback, Geoff - your Photogrammetry-Fu is pretty good, congrats :-) The machine you're looking at in that picture is the 12"x12"x12" prototype (T-Rex-12). So far, the tallest object we've printed on it is 10.5" - you can see it in some of the other pictures we've posted, it's that translucent vase. We have another .75" in this prototype, and the remaining .75" will be in the production machine. The longest object so far has been the Snake at a little over 13" (printed diagonally) - you can see it in the picture with 2 snakes. Let me know if you'd like me to post them here. Both were printed in PLA without any corners lifting or layer de-lamination associated with ABS. Since both of these prints achieved the state of thermal equilibrium a long time before finishing, they show that scaling them larger will work just fine. Of course, once we have the production machines up, we'll be showing that too.

Re: heated bed: so far, we've been able to print relatively large objects without it. Granted we're testing with PLA, and ABS is a whole different kettle of fish. I totally agree that for ABS you absolutely need a heated bed. So the design allows for it both mechanically (there's enough space between the glass and the aluminum plate to place a heater and an insulator, and there's space in the Z-axis housing to run the moving cable) and electrically (the controller has the power MOSFET to run it and there's plenty of power in the 24V power supply to run it on the 12" machine). In fact, I have the actual heater for the T-Rex-12 prototype sitting on my desk.

As some of the other large machine project also found out, the supply is rather thin for the heating pads of larger size. In fact, we couldn't find one for any sort of reasonable $$$. So we're looking to solve the problem our own way. I can't talk bout it yet, as we don't have the solution tested. But we are working on it, albeit at a lower priority than other tasks.

Lastly, you mention heated enclosure. I agree that a controlled thermal environment would help for some materials and some builds. The large PLA builds we've done so far don't seem to be troubled by its lack. But ABS's layer de-lamination issues can certainly be helped by it. There are two major issues with including it into the design:
1. Our machine folds - and it's a critical feature for us. We tried to include a folding enclosure, but quickly realized that doing a good job of it would delay the project by several months. We couldn't afford to do that. So we based on user feedback we decided to leave it out of this version of the machine. If enough people want it, we can work on it in the future.

2. The Stratasys patents are hanging over us in this area. The recent events show that SSYS is going to be aggressive about its patents. We simply can't afford to be involved in this fight at this time. If you think this is not the right way to approach this market, please provide this feedback to SSYS and Makerbot. They're much more likely to listen to you, the Customer, then to me.

The main reason we've not pushed hard on these two issues is that so far all the feedback we've had from the potential users is that PLA, HIPS, and Nylon are higher priority than ABS for them. So we've been told not to spend out time on this issue until later. Certainly before production machines go out the door, but not now. And we've followed that advice.

I will consider this discussion as feedback going the other way, and fold it in accordingly. Again, thank you for your feedback. Please keep it up.

Finally, we've just opened a separate forum here dedicated to our project. Please come and join us there: http://3dprintboard.com/forumdisplay...3DMonstr-Forum

[Geoff]

Just joined. Thanks for the feedback, Geoff - your Photogrammetry-Fu is pretty good, congrats :-) The machine you're looking at in that picture is the 12"x12"x12" prototype (T-Rex-12). So far, the tallest object we've printed on it is 10.5" - you can see it in some of the other pictures we've posted, it's that translucent vase. We have another .75" in this prototype, and the remaining .75" will be in the production machine. The longest object so far has been the Snake at a little over 13" (printed diagonally) - you can see it in the picture with 2 snakes. Let me know if you'd like me to post them here. Both were printed in PLA without any corners lifting or layer de-lamination associated with ABS. Since both of these prints achieved the state of thermal equilibrium a long time before finishing, they show that scaling them larger will work just fine. Of course, once we have the production machines up, we'll be showing that too.

Re: heated bed: so far, we've been able to print relatively large objects without it. Granted we're testing with PLA, and ABS is a whole different kettle of fish. I totally agree that for ABS you absolutely need a heated bed. So the design allows for it both mechanically (there's enough space between the glass and the aluminum plate to place a heater and an insulator, and there's space in the Z-axis housing to run the moving cable) and electrically (the controller has the power MOSFET to run it and there's plenty of power in the 24V power supply to run it on the 12" machine). In fact, I have the actual heater for the T-Rex-12 prototype sitting on my desk.

As some of the other large machine project also found out, the supply is rather thin for the heating pads of larger size. In fact, we couldn't find one for any sort of reasonable $$$. So we're looking to solve the problem our own way. I can't talk bout it yet, as we don't have the solution tested. But we are working on it, albeit at a lower priority than other tasks.

Lastly, you mention heated enclosure. I agree that a controlled thermal environment would help for some materials and some builds. The large PLA builds we've done so far don't seem to be troubled by its lack. But ABS's layer de-lamination issues can certainly be helped by it. There are two major issues with including it into the design:
1. Our machine folds - and it's a critical feature for us. We tried to include a folding enclosure, but quickly realized that doing a good job of it would delay the project by several months. We couldn't afford to do that. So we based on user feedback we decided to leave it out of this version of the machine. If enough people want it, we can work on it in the future.

2. The Stratasys patents are hanging over us in this area. The recent events show that SSYS is going to be aggressive about its patents. We simply can't afford to be involved in this fight at this time. If you think this is not the right way to approach this market, please provide this feedback to SSYS and Makerbot. They're much more likely to listen to you, the Customer, then to me.

The main reason we've not pushed hard on these two issues is that so far all the feedback we've had from the potential users is that PLA, HIPS, and Nylon are higher priority than ABS for them. So we've been told not to spend out time on this issue until later. Certainly before production machines go out the door, but not now. And we've followed that advice.

I will consider this discussion as feedback going the other way, and fold it in accordingly. Again, thank you for your feedback. Please keep it up.

Finally, we've just opened a separate forum here dedicated to our project. Please come and join us there: http://3dprintboard.com/forumdisplay...3DMonstr-Forum

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,

so far all the feedback we've had from the potential users is that PLA, HIPS, and Nylon are higher priority than ABS for them. So we've been told not to spend out time on this issue until later. Certainly before production machines go out the door, but not now. And we've followed that advice.

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.

[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