Conveyor belt printers, definitely the upcoming 'thing'.

[curious aardvark]

Conveyor belt 3d printers are often seen as niche machines aimed at the industrial sector.
And because they essentially have an infinite 'y' axis. They can not only produce very long items but can do fairly large - untended production runs as well.

Also because the print head is set on an angle - they can also print very long unsupported 'bridges'.
It's a great compromise between treaditional fdm and the kind of prints you can do with powder based sls machines.

But until recently you were looking at around $10,000 as a starting point and Blackbelt were the only guys still going who were making them.
https://blackbelt-3d.com/

This has changed :-)
Not only has there been a recent kickstarter:
the powerbelt zero: https://powerbelt3d.com/
Not entirely sure if it's shipping yet but current price is a mere $744
(seriously ? I'd have rounded it up to 750)


But one printer does not a trend make.
So here we have Naomi Wu - the one who's videos you only watch when your partner is not around ;-)
She has developed her own machine.
And I have to say - it looks pretty decent. A lot more robust than the powerbelt zero. The reinforcing on the z axis is an obvious and good idea. Not sure why the powerbelt guys didn't do this.


I like naomi - yeah yeah, but she looked better before the latest 'enlargement' - she's a young chinese woman who's built up a very succesful youtube channel. partly on looks but largely because she really knows what she is doing. Some of her earlier 'wearable' tech was truly inspired.

So when she says this is her design - Believe her !

I need to track down the other videos she mentions - for some reason it looks like she is using a bowden tube. Which, given the rigidity and sturdiness of her frame would seem to be daft and totally pointless - but it could simply be a badly routed feed tube.

But there is no doubt that cheap, desktop belt printers are very definitely looming large on the horizon.

Creality aren't stupid - make no mistake, Naomi has sold a LOT of printers for them.
So they'll probably wait till her kickstarter has run it's cpurse before producing their own brand belt machine. But would anyone bet against it ?

And once creality make one the rest of the chinese printer manufacturers will follow suite.
And why not - great machines with a bunch of useful and unique features.
Just about every person making weapons for cosplayers would buy one :-)

So watch this space !

Interesting thing.
https://www.youtube.com/c/NAK3DDesigns/videos
The guy naomi mentions in her video who developed the White Knight belt printer.
Is actually calling this machine the creality cr-30.
So looks like it will be a creality machine with Naomi basically being part of the overall marketing.

No apparent mention of naomi in any of his videos on the machine.

[petersglassshop]

I recently received Powerbelt3D units #002 & #003 and have been working on assembly. As a young startup with a clearly beta product at a rock bottom price, I'm not surprised the packages were missing parts that I'm currently waiting on....although I was a bit shocked that they forgot to include the actual belt in the package LOL. Really excited to increase production of our parts...and get rid of batch printing.

20200924_170601.jpg

20200924_170606.jpg

[curious aardvark]

they forgot the belts ?
Ye gods.

Really interested to see how you get on, please keep us posted :-)

[petersglassshop]

Oops...my bad, they did not forget the belts, they were disguised as packing material LOL.....there were other important items missing, but not the belts thank goodness :-)
They have responded to my inventory & 1st build attempt, and they are sending out the missing parts. They are a very small operation, and first timers in this business....I'm happy to extend grace...the machines are only $400 for the early-bird Kickstarter special. I really can't complain, they are being very responsive & helpful....and transparent about their mistakes.