Mark One users??

[Dustin]

Hi all,
New to this forum, not to the additive world. I've just gotten a Mark One and am wondering what experiences people are having with the machine, software, and so on. So far, my few prints have looked pretty good, and the machine seems nice. The software is fairly limited from what I can tell so far and I think they're making a substantial mistake by requiring an internet connection to use it, but I've really only had a few days to play with it.

Does anyone know of any independent reviews of this? There is very little info out there, and what's out there is all glowing praise.

D

[jimc]

your the first person i ever heard of to own one. they seemed more of a myth lol

[Dustin]

your the first person i ever heard of to own one. they seemed more of a myth lol

Yeah, I'm not sure if everyone is being quiet or what. This printer sits in kind of a strange spot between the consumer and professional printers. It might be a no mans land, but they seem to have sold a pile of these things. It'd be nice to develop some kind of user community.

[juannadie]

Hi,
I am a new owner/user of the Mark One 3D Printer, one of those rare guys.
It is pretty cool in fact. However as I start using it have issues adjusting the right printing settings. Will post on that soon.

[The Doof Kitty]

I've got one. Been doing some test prints with it with varying success. I have printed in Kevlar, but haven't gotten the carbon fiber yet. I was a little disappointed at how limited the options are with the Kevlar/fiber: you can choose either a concentric reinforcing ring, with an adjustable number of fibers, or an isotropic fill, where you can choose the angle of the fibers in each layer, allowing you to print adjacent layers at angles to each other for increased strength. Carbon fiber appears to be limited to the concentric option.

You can choose which layers to put fiber in, but you cannot choose specific areas of the layer. This means if you have a piece with a large cross section, but you only need to reinforce a specific part of it, you have to waste a lot of fiber reinforcing the entire cross section.

The fiber seems to extremely limited by geometry. You need at least about a square inch of area to be able to fit any isotropic fiber in the print. It will not be able to lay fiber in any areas of the layer that are much smaller. Concentric fill is even more picky. So far this has been the most frustrating limitation. If you print a plastic part with tabs that snap into another part, the printer will probably not be able to reinforce the tabs, which are the parts that most need reinforcement. You can't make small pins, rods, etc. out of fiber. Basically anything that isn't a relatively wide, flat sheet will not be able to make use of fiber. If anyone has found a solution to this, I would love to hear it.

[juannadie]

Same problem I have with the reinforcing layers. Flat parts work well but I tried a couple of relativelly simple 3D parts and it didn't work. I assuming this is a software limitation and should be improved by the company in the near future. Looking to it...

[The Doof Kitty]

I think it is either a hardware limitation or a limitation of the material itself, that is, either the head has to extrude some minimum amount of fiber to work properly, or the fiber itself won't bond or form or something if it is extruded in too small of segments.

Some strange issues have happened to me though. For example, I was trying to print a relatively large piece with small protruding tab that I wanted to reinforce. By orienting it just right and setting the isotropic angles just right, I was able to fit a little bit of fiber in the tab. I didn't want to print the entire piece, because the estimated print time was like three days, and it contained a large volume of expensive fiber. So I went into Autodesk and cut off about 75% of the part, leaving the section containing the tab. But with this part, I couldn't get the software to fit any fiber in the tab at any angle, no matter how I oriented it. My alterations did not affect the geometry of the tab area at all. The software seems to just be very finicky and inconsistent.

[juannadie]

I have the same issue. Tried to print more complex parts and was not able to add fiber layers, quite dissapointing. Still a nice printer but at this point very very limited in pinting options and adding fiber layers. It works well for simple planar geometries only.

[Dustin]

Glad to hear from some other users! I have noticed the software limitations too, and control of the fiber layout has been frustrating to say the least. Hope it gets better with subsequent software!!

[juannadie]

It is the second time my Mark One printer sudenly stops with a 'Pinter Disabled' error message on the screen. It is frustating that the printer stops at 75% after half day pinting. Hope this will be solved by the technical support guys.