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12-26-2013, 10:03 AM #1
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
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12-27-2013, 03:21 PM #2
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.
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.Last edited by Geoff; 12-27-2013 at 03:27 PM.
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12-27-2013, 04:24 PM #3
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.
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12-28-2013, 05:20 AM #4
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
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