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3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

additivepartdesign.com

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Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#61

Post by patcheudor »

Animats wrote: post #5

From the article: "One defect I observed on the Lulzbot printed part was the blade portion of the tool had a split in it from not bonding correctly. This was most likely a cause of pushing the 0.5mm nozzle to its limits in terms of layer height but a little glue and some pressure would fix this split no problem." Er, that's called a "reject" in manufacturing. This is the basic problem with low-end filament-type 3D pr…

"This is the basic problem with low-end filament-type 3D printers - weak layer bonding. You're welding a hot thing to a cold thing, which never works well."

Bonding always works well for me and many others. The author of this story choose to use a material (HIPS) which really should still be considered experimental for most FDM printers. I've personally never had a lot of luck with it and instead choose to use either PLA or ABS with a heated chamber & with those two materials can build very strong parts with no boding problems whatsoever. Here's an example of a violin I've recently printed:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/patcheudor/26263996272/in/date...

Note that I've now printed five violins and in the 100's of hours it has taken to do so not had a single failed print even when printing thin (typically .40 mm) shells.

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#62

Post by 8note »

pipio21 wrote: post #32
ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this article, but perhaps not for the reasons the author hoped. This quote, "With some tweaks to my G code and use of a nozzle that is more suited for higher resolution prints I am confident that I could produce a part that would be very close to the quality of the Stratasys produced part." really summed it up. It sums to "I can tweak my setup and get this part to be good enough relative to the expensive ma…

As the article says, if you want precision and repeatability, you don't use a FDM in the first place, you will mechanize the piece. As an engineer I use my FDM machines in order to detect "bugs" in my design, easily and cheaply. I don't need to cut a block of aluminum that volumetrically encloses the piece I want, unless I am certain the design is perfect. The great advantage of FDM is the ability to print with suppo…

the tenths of a micron are such that you can get the micron measurements from the glass and thus the 5 micron prints

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#63

Post by detaro »

willvarfar wrote: post #22

I have never seen a 3D printer, although I have seen a model (of a house plan) made with a 3D printer. You folks who live near civilization and 'make' communities are so lucky! :) Are there any 3D printers that integrate a milling machine? I imagine a machine that prints the model slightly oversize, milling and then perhaps finally warming the surface to polish it, all as it goes... I would love to have access to a h…

possible, but it probably is more a "mill with a 3D-print attachment" in terms of construction and price. A mill has to have higher stability, stronger motors, ... than a pure printer, driving the price up.

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#64

Post by TeMPOraL »

baq wrote: post #14
ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this article, but perhaps not for the reasons the author hoped. This quote, "With some tweaks to my G code and use of a nozzle that is more suited for higher resolution prints I am confident that I could produce a part that would be very close to the quality of the Stratasys produced part." really summed it up. It sums to "I can tweak my setup and get this part to be good enough relative to the expensive ma…

i haven't ever used or owned a 3d printer and this part >This quote, "With some tweaks to my G code and use of a nozzle that is more suited for higher resolution prints I am confident that I could produce a part that would be very close to the quality of the Stratasys produced part." really summed it up. It sums to "I can tweak my setup and get this part to be good enough relative to the expensive machine." and that…

Sounds like your job involves making small amount of similar text manipulations on a large number of computers. Which is different than what the tools you mentioned were design for - i.e. for doing lots of different jobs on a small number of computers.

As a dev, I use two computers +/- a few shells for most of my work. Little enough to manage configurations by hand. I'm more like a machine shop from GP's comment - machine shops do jobs to the same standards, but internally, each one is likely to be unique in its setup, tooling and process.

What you're ranting about is lack of tools suited for the kind of job you do. My needs are different, so my complaints will be opposite - I'd like tools to be more like Emacs; capable of being molded and integrated to better fit any given job I have to perform.

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#65

Post by deskamess »

jacquesm wrote: post #29
willvarfar wrote: post #22

I have never seen a 3D printer, although I have seen a model (of a house plan) made with a 3D printer. You folks who live near civilization and 'make' communities are so lucky! :) Are there any 3D printers that integrate a milling machine? I imagine a machine that prints the model slightly oversize, milling and then perhaps finally warming the surface to polish it, all as it goes... I would love to have access to a h…

> Are there any 3D printers that integrate a milling machine? No, and there likely never will be. Why would you wait for hours to then still have to mill down your final product when all the advantages of 3D printing are then lost and all the advantages of milling are lost? The advantages of 3D printing are that as an additive process it will work in many environments where a subtractive process would not, the advant…

Wow... I have never thought of the process in the linguistic terms "additive" and "subtractive". That actually changes the mental model for me. I have always thought, in less abstract terms, about removing shapes (carving out) and optionally sticking external parts (bolting on) to get the desired product. The specific add and subtract "language" presents it in familiar, abstract, and, more importantly, composable model.

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#66

Post by Certified »

"The Stratasys printed part was printed with ABS material, 100% infill with a standard layer height on normal detail settings. Not having direct access to the machine I was not able to extract any real nitty gritty details on the overall print set up. For the Lulzbot print that I created I used HIPS material with a 0.5mm nozzle, 0.1mm layer height, 25% infill, 4 top and bottom solid layers, 45 mm/s print speed with standard acceleration, 240C extrusion temperature, 110C bed temperature, and an extrusion width of 0.6mm."

This is an apple to oranges comparison. I work with a Lulzbot 5, a Lulzbot Mini, a Stratasys dimension elite, and two polyprinters on a daily basis and have been working with 3D printers for over 10 years as part of my job. Why was a material like HIPS ever used for comparison with ABS if both machines can print with ABS? Why was the extrusion width 0.6mm on a 0.5mm nozzle? Why is he comparing a 100% fill print with a 25% fill print? Why didn't he mention that the Lulzbot Taz 5 he was using has a $500 print head upgrade to let it print soluble support material as well? This whole article just reeks of either someone who is either very new and inexperienced to Hobby 3D printers or was intentionally trying to make the TAZ 5 look bad. I have done similar comparison studies myself and have come to drastically different conclusions. We sold the dimension elite a while ago.

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#67

Post by rfrey »

ahoka wrote: post #38
ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

I enjoyed this article, but perhaps not for the reasons the author hoped. This quote, "With some tweaks to my G code and use of a nozzle that is more suited for higher resolution prints I am confident that I could produce a part that would be very close to the quality of the Stratasys produced part." really summed it up. It sums to "I can tweak my setup and get this part to be good enough relative to the expensive ma…

"It sums to "I can tweak my setup and get this part to be good enough relative to the expensive machine." and that is great. What is missing is it is every friggin' part. Seriously, all of the $2,000 printers have quirks that hit based on part geometry, especially in ABS. Part too long? need to add hold down tabs to prevent warping. Too many overhangs? extra supports. Too long a tool travel? Up the hotend temperature…

No, this is like the crusty machinist who knows just how to wiggle his hips and shake his elbow to get a 1/2 thou on the worn-out bridgeport in the corner.

FDM should let engineers make prototypes without bothering that guy (whose time is probably 3x more valuable than theirs, even if his pay doesn't reflect it). This sounds like the printer is just a more compact version of the worn-out mill.

Plus you have to account for the printer's quirks right in your 3d model which is annoying and error-prone. (Yes, I know every package has a way to segregate those changes, etc. but still.)

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#68

Post by Guthur »

Certified wrote: post #66

"The Stratasys printed part was printed with ABS material, 100% infill with a standard layer height on normal detail settings. Not having direct access to the machine I was not able to extract any real nitty gritty details on the overall print set up. For the Lulzbot print that I created I used HIPS material with a 0.5mm nozzle, 0.1mm layer height, 25% infill, 4 top and bottom solid layers, 45 mm/s print speed with s…

I'm not familiar with the tech but having read the article I feel he was very positive about the TAZ 5 and so doubt he was going out of his way to make it look bad.

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#69

Post by dpark »

baq wrote: post #15
onion2k wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If his conclusion were true companies like Shapeways would only use cheap hobby printers. But ofcourse it is not. It's far from a perfect analogy, but with servers Google demonstrated really well that the cost of high-end 'professional' equipment can be a waste of money where cheap, commodity kit can be used at scale instead. It's not completely unreasonable to think that a farm of cheap 3D printers could be used in…

the difference in 3d printers and servers is rather hard to compare: different servers can compute the same result, faster, slower, but it'll be the same. not exactly true with 3d printers, where a result isn't binary.

Servers aren't actually binary, either. Your cheap server might serve the same result (binary), but performance might degrade under load more rapidly (nonbinary), the failure rate might be be higher (nonbinary), and the support for cheap hardware might be nonexistent (nonbinary). There's also the issue of SKU drift/mix as your cheap hardware fails and gets replaced with a different/newer SKU (adds maintenance cost, is also nonbinary).

At the end of the day, the cost difference plus the ability to mitigate/hide the problems via software makes the commodity hardware the winning option, but it's not just a matter of "same bits come out; good enough".

Commodity hardware is also not really cheap. These are 1U/2U servers that cost thousands of dollars. These are cheap relative to mainframes, but they're not consumer devices.

Re: 3D Printer Comparison: $200,000 vs. $2500

#70

Post by jacquesm »

willvarfar wrote: post #46
jacquesm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would have to be a pretty fancy mill then. Any kind of overhang and you won't be able to re-work it without a 5 axis job. And yes, you've caught on to one of the big issues with low cost 3d printers: surface finish.

There may be places a milling arm can't reach, but if you can do it by hand with a Dremel, you can automate it with a gantry and motors and stuff :) Seems within the realms of hobbyist attainment. Some kind of rig that works in unison with a 3D printer...

Your hands have an incredible number of degrees of freedom.
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