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MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

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Re: MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

#31

Post by pontifier »

analognoise wrote: post #28
pontifier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the basic idea is to separate data transfer from what I call locking. Data transfer can be done quickly, then locking can happen passively at whatever rate it needs. Data transfer can take many forms. A simple example is an array of needles,pointing downward, forming a horizontal plane. The plane of needles is withdrawn upward through a granular material and dropplets of glue bind the material only where it sho…

The number of pins in such a design would dictate your surface roughness. Where would you be loading the glue from, if they're also being drawn through the binder. Also, glue doesn't set instantaneously. I can see only problems with this approach?

That is the resolution tradeoff with this particular method. Each needle would be fed from a tube connected to its own control valve. Non bound material would act as support while the glue (or other binding agent) worked.

In my imagination I see a chair made from shredded tires, and bonded with a silicon caulking like substance. The shredded tires would be filled into a container between the needles as the printing array rises.

Re: MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

#32

Post by logicallee »

japhyr wrote: post #8

> All technologies are improved with lasers. I love this writing style, clear and informative but playful at the same time.

Sorry, but based on some style issues in the rest of the document, I don't think that was meant to be playful. I think it just meant "The lasers improve all aspects of" this technology. (I could be wrong.)

Re: MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

#33

Post by pontifier »

jfries wrote: post #29
pontifier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the basic idea is to separate data transfer from what I call locking. Data transfer can be done quickly, then locking can happen passively at whatever rate it needs. Data transfer can take many forms. A simple example is an array of needles,pointing downward, forming a horizontal plane. The plane of needles is withdrawn upward through a granular material and dropplets of glue bind the material only where it sho…

Cool thinking! The linked printer can be seen as optimized for serialized throughput, whereas in the end the total amount of data transferred is what matters. So parallelize! Are there FDM printers with multiple nozzles extruding in the same plane? That seems like an obvious incremental step from regular single nozzle printers.

I've got an unfinished 6 head printer that was intended to print 6 identical objects at a time.

Re: MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

#34

Post by pontifier »

thanksDr wrote: post #24
pontifier wrote: post #17

I've got a design for a printer that should be about 10,000 times faster than this. It's really a game of data transfer speed. How fast can you transfer information about solid vs non-solid into space? The velocity and acceleration of that printer is very impressive, but maxing out the movement speed of a single physical nozzle is not going to get us where we need to be in the future. If anyone is interested in colla…

Can you give us an outline?

Here's a video that I like that kind of demonstrates how fast things could go if you optimise for speed this way...

https://youtu.be/-P28LKWTzrI

Re: MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

#35

Post by Animats »

Ardren wrote: post #19
aeleos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely possible that you couldn’t reach the speeds that they are with any kind of traditional heater cartridge. You need a lot of power directly on the filament to melt is at quickly as they are.

Titan 3D Robotics has a extruder that claims to be able to print 1 pound of filament an hour which for ABS would be able 400 cm^3 (I think?) I believe it's water cooled but still looks to be using traditional heater cartridges. Specs: http://www.titan3drobotics.com/atlas/ Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKPKIGcrlFU

Right. That's what you get when you build a 3D printer like a CNC machine. Titan takes in pellets directly, rather than bothering with filament. They probably use a heating system and drive screw like an injection molding machine. They can print with more plastics than filament printers. They end up with a lot of moving mass on the print head, but that's what big motors and controllers are for. The Titan unit uses 14KW of power.

I'd once considered heating the surface to which you are bonding with a laser, just ahead of the extruder, so you weld hot surface to hot surface, not hot surface to cold surface. That's why filament type 3D printers make such weak joints between layers.

Re: MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

#36

Post by StavrosK »

pontifier wrote: post #17

I've got a design for a printer that should be about 10,000 times faster than this. It's really a game of data transfer speed. How fast can you transfer information about solid vs non-solid into space? The velocity and acceleration of that printer is very impressive, but maxing out the movement speed of a single physical nozzle is not going to get us where we need to be in the future. If anyone is interested in colla…

10,000 times faster at printing a single object?

Re: MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

#37

Post by Ardren »

Animats wrote: post #35
Ardren wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Titan 3D Robotics has a extruder that claims to be able to print 1 pound of filament an hour which for ABS would be able 400 cm^3 (I think?) I believe it's water cooled but still looks to be using traditional heater cartridges. Specs: http://www.titan3drobotics.com/atlas/ Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKPKIGcrlFU

Right. That's what you get when you build a 3D printer like a CNC machine. Titan takes in pellets directly, rather than bothering with filament. They probably use a heating system and drive screw like an injection molding machine. They can print with more plastics than filament printers. They end up with a lot of moving mass on the print head, but that's what big motors and controllers are for. The Titan unit uses 14…

I think the 400cm^3 figure was for the non-pellet version while the pellet version can use 10mm nozzles and extrudes a ridiculous amount more. I wish there was more published information about both of their extruders, they look quite interesting.

I'm guessing that absurd power requirement is for the 85C heated enclosure variant, otherwise I'm no idea where the 60amps are going.

I remember reading about a slicer with an option to use the hotend just as a heat source that traced the previous layer to smooth/blend it. Using a laser may be a good method of improving the surface finish as well.

Re: MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers

#39

Post by jfries »

pontifier wrote: post #33
jfries wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool thinking! The linked printer can be seen as optimized for serialized throughput, whereas in the end the total amount of data transferred is what matters. So parallelize! Are there FDM printers with multiple nozzles extruding in the same plane? That seems like an obvious incremental step from regular single nozzle printers.

I've got an unfinished 6 head printer that was intended to print 6 identical objects at a time.

Could also be used to accelerate the print of a single item by having different nozzles work at different parts of the design at once. Would need lots of updates to the slicer and solving some tricky optimization problems.
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