3D Printer for Artists

[Feign]

I'm building a 3d printer right now and I'm trying to assess what the market for it is like. I've been getting good feedback from people but I've been trying to think what I can change to make it better. That sander would need some killer R&D.

Ah hah, well perhaps you should have asked wha twe would realistically want in a 3D printer. I figure cutting the build are down to 2'x2'x2' would make the thing more buildable. 64ft2 is big enough to print a room in 8-12 pieces, rather than most archetectural printers either taking a truly huge amount of time or requiring a significant amount of assembly. Even at half the size to a side, the thing would be a massive and expensive beast.

Most of the problems with running out of material are alleviated with certain kinds of paste extruder, since you can feed them from a top-mounted hopper rather than a fixed length filament reel, meaning there's no pause if you just keep the hoppers topped off as material is used.

Concepts like hybrid additive/subtractive manufacturing are pretty much beyond the cutting edge of the industry, only being used in some pretty well equipped labs. I included it because when a surface finishing process is included, you can get good looking prints even with very large layer heights. With smaller prints it becomes unnecessary.

The use of a heat gun assisted paste extrusion is something I've only ever seen on Dirk Vander Kooij's older prints, he has since moved on to printing in MIG-welded metal, but the earlier method still hits me as having a lot of potential.

I guess the best answer to the new question is that most artists, if they don't just use a printing service, manage to commission or build a specific costomized 3D printing irg rather than buying a consumer one. Kooij is a good example here, skipping the 3D printer format completely and using an industrial 6DOF robot arm to create large objects without consideration for overhang because it prints independant of gravity.

Little known fact: Overhang failure isn't due to gravity, but instead due to material pressure torquing itself off the layer. As long as the first layer sticks to the print bed, you can hang a printer upside down or sideways and it will continue printing just fine.