3D Printer Advice
 

At my school we have a 3D printer that is pretty crappy and pretty much useless. Our teacher has applied for a $10,000 grant to put towards new machinery and we were thinking about getting a new 3D printer. Not knowing much about 3D printers I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations? We need one that can print detailed parts that are durable enough to be used on our robot. We would also like one that prints negative space in powder although if you have a suggestion for a different type we are open to other options. We would like the printer to be large enough to print a 1X1X1 foot cube at the minimum, and lastly, we would like to keep it under $10,000.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

that particular combination of requirements will be hard to find. $10k is not much for a "commercial" 3D printer. You'll also spend more on material on the more expensive printers.

2151 in 2012 had 17 3D printed parts on the robot, and none broke during competition, including the custom pulleys. All were printed on my $700 makerbot cupcake, and none were printed with support material. They are published to thingiverse if you want to check them out.

One of the things you can learn from 3d printing is how to design for the manufacturing process. If you have a milling machine, you are constrained to certain rules. If you have a 3D printer, you are constrained to other rules. You need to learn to design within the rules of your process.

What are you planning to print? The newest makerbot machines and some of the other "hobbyist" level machines are capable of dual material (either color or the second one can be dissolved), and has decent accuracy for under $3000. The build area is large enough to print a loaf of bread or a 2012 basketball. Get a large stockpile of material with another $500-$1000 and you can print quite a few things for your robot.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

Talk to anybody from 207 Metalcrafters. They always use 3D printing in some shape or form. This thread has both some talk as well as some links to other threads that talk about their robots.

This thread also has some 3D printer recommendations.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

I agree with the comments above. It is difficult to get commercial quality for under 10k. I worked with many commercial machines and even with them it takes a good amount of time to dial in the settings. I have spent the take with makerbots and got results comprable to 20k machine I worked with at my university, of course not the same. I don't know the current machine you have currently but maybe thats something to keep in mind.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

Our lab on campus has an HP designjet ($20,000+) that we have used to print a lot of parts this year (such as encoder mounts). It prints nice parts.
Our mentor has a Makerbot that we used to print several parts & mini robot prototypes during the design phase to use on a mini pyramid. It does a decent job of printing.

I would suggest you look into the MakerBot Replicator 2 (or Replicator 2x if you want 2 heads for 2 colors).

Hope this helps you make your decision. Contact CoreyBrown if you have any questions about the MakerBot.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

We spring plenty of parts on a Dimension machine that cost $15,000 about 6 or 7 years ago...I can find the exact model number later, but I believe the tray is 8x10x10

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

The machines with powder in their negative build space are Selective Laser Sintering sytems. A new laser will set you back about $100K, not counting the rest of the machine. Last I looked into it SLS machines were running $500k though there are now some new, smaller machines that are less

It sounds like your existing machine is not properly dialed in. This can be a painstaking process and you need a pretty good understanding of the details of the machine to get it right. If you should happen to move the machine to a different location you might have to redo the settings.

Do you know what a properly built part from your machine should look like? What material and color are you using? Some materials are hydroscopic and that can cause problems if the material has been sitting around for a long time. Different colors may also build differently due to the coloring agents and fillers used

We have a Mendel type with a 16"x16"x 10" build volume which works very well for us, but it took weeks to get it dialed in. We also had the manufacturer send us some parts so we could see what things should look like. Pictures were just not doing it for us. If you post some pictures of those "crappy" parts we might be able to help you figure out what is wrong with your build parameters

ChrisH

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

We have a Dimension 1200es in our school; I'm not sure about the printer's price, but I do know that each tray of "ink" (i.e. plastic) costs on the order of $200 apiece.

Unless you go with a RepRap or a MakerBot product, you're going to be hard-pressed to get a 3D printer and have the funds to stock it, let alone a "professional" one.

FWIW, IMO the only caveats with using hobby 3D printers is that their resolution is comparatively low (I believe .1", but that's still pretty good). The durability of the final product is dependent on the quality of the material you use.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

David, the HP designjet is a plotter. In the lab we have a Fortus 250 and a uPrint Plus on the ABS printing side (what you would use for any robot parts) and a Zprint used for showcasing designs as it prints in a powder base resulting in fragile parts.

All of the machines we use in the lab are expensive commercial machines owned by the university but there are plenty of other avenues to go down. With the funding you are looking at I would suggest a Replicator 2x as an out of the box solution. After purchasing the machine you should still set aside money for plastic and maintaining the machine.

With this option you can allocate around $4-5,000 for this printer and use the remainder of your funds on other equipment.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

Alex, Stratsys sold uPrint Plus's to HP rebranded as HP Designjets, but as far as I can tell it didn't last long and there is less information readily found about them because they appear to be now defunct.

I like other recommend looking at Makerbots as they are constantly getting more competitive in their capabilities.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

I would try to fix up your current printer, and get a laser cutter. They are far more versatile for large objects, much faster than 3D printers, and can cut any material other than metal or glass that comes in flat sheets. A hackerspace near where I lived ordered one direct from China with a 2' x 3' cutting area and 80W laser for $5000, as an example of how much you will spend. Ordering from a US based importer will cost you more.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

The newly announced CubeX comes close to your build volume at far less than $10k ($2999 for dual head.) That cheaper price is a good thing because the filament is twice the price of printers that take generic filament. That's clearly the strategy, sell the printer cheap and make money on consumables. I don't know of anyone who has one yet but if it is trouble free, the higher priced filament might make sense. We often throw away half of the prints coming out of our Afinia.

http://www.cubify.com/cubex/

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

We have been using 3D parts on our bots since 2011. I have a few posted related to this topic. I am by no means an expert.

We have used these parts on everything from our drive train, (bearing blocks and wheels) to manipulators with great success. If anything it saves us machine time, everything we have printed we had the resources to machine but did not want to dedicate the time.

Designing the parts for your machine is the most important part of this process. We have a a Dimension Uprint with a 6x8x8 build. We fully understand how the part is built in the machine to maximize its capability. We also understand what application the 3d parts are best suited.

All I can say is have realistic expectations for your parts and test them. This is not a save all solution. Be aware that certain chemicals will react with ABS and can and will fail your parts.

I am sure you can use the search function here, many of these topics have been covered.

Good luck

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

What other machine tools do you have? What are the issues with your current 3D printer? The $10K may well have a better use, depending on what your current capabilities are.

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Our team has a Dimension UPrint Plus. We really like it, but it runs around $20,000. We have used it for pulleys, gears to drive potentiometers/encoders, encoder mounts and led ring mounts. I know some teams have used them for wheels etc, but the printing material (ABS) can become prohibitively expensive. The deposition layer thickness is 0.01”.

There is a new 3D printer, the Form1, which will be available this spring. It was a fully funded kickstarter project that shows great promise. Instead of deposition of thermal plastic, it is based on stereo-lithography. It is intriguing, but I cannot give a recommendation on something I haven’t used. Here's another link to a youtube interview about the printer.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

I've been using 3D printed parts on robots since ~2007/2008 or so and they're definitely neat. That being said, what you plan on using the printer for will define what kind of printer you're looking for.

Realistically, if you're just looking for something that can make light load parts like spacers, sensor mounts and things of that nature, you can get away with just about any 'Hobbiest +' level 3D printer like Makerbot's Replicator2. Most people that 3D print rarely ever need anything more than that, especially if it's something that's not being used that often.

If you think that it's going to see a lot of use in terms of volume (not size of parts, but number of them) it's worth looking into something like a Dimension Uprint. It's basically the same technology from Dimension's Larger Printers in a smaller package. There are some weird quirks to the machine, but all in all, it's pretty good. It might be a bit out of the price range though, IIRC, the prices went up last fall, so now a Uprint is 12-15k depending on what package you want/need.

Honestly though, considering that you've got 10k or so to spend, I'd get a Makerbot and a bunch of material. That'd set you back right around $3k or so, which leaves you $7k to invest elsewhere. The real problem with looking at 3D printers on a limited budget is that you can't have it all. You'll either sacrifice reliability, quality or parts throughput to get something in that range.

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We used a Makerbot Replicator 2 this year. Its way under your budget, and the material is cheap. The resolution is very good for FRC type stuff. We've made fan mounts, encoder brackets, shifter lockouts, timing belt pulleys, hex shaft spacers and even protoyped our climber linear bearings.

I'd go for the Replicator 2x so you can print in PLA and ABS.

The plastic is very strong in compression. It's pretty strong in tension but a little weaker in the direction of the layers. Consider that when you design parts. You can control the percentage of fill to trade strength for weight and print speed.

PLA plastic has a shelf life (moisture absorbtion). Don't go too overboard on material if you go that route.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

Thanks for all the feedback! Right now we have the Solido 3000 Pro (http://www.solido3d.com/) that the school district bought for many of the schools in the county. It ends up wasting more material than is needed to create the actual object and it is a hassel to remove the objects from the block it produces and even then the pieces tend to break apart in the process. Now that our season is over (sadly didn't make it to worlds) we have some time to look at some of these different models and find one that's right for us!

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

that's a very interesting printer technology, but I agree that it's probably not the right printer for robot parts. Would be great for prototyping, though. It looks like another one that requires you to match your design to the technology. Even in the promo video, you can see that he has a few slices through all the waste material so that it will be possible to break the parts out of the block. Properly adding these slices in the right place is critical to this kind of part removal.

I did quite a bit of prototype work on some of the first 3D waterjet parts for the company i worked for, and the waste removal slices were certainly the most interesting part of getting things made.

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This was my first thought as well. Does the grant absolutely have to go towards a 3D printer? If not, there are many, many things I could think of devoting 10K in funding towards that would benefit your team more than an expensive (or inexpensive) 3D printer. Honestly you could probably find another team or a mentor that has access to one locally in the off-chance that you need a few parts printed up, or you could have Print To 3D contract print some of your parts for you (ran by 222's mentor Brad). Just some food for thought; I'm a huge fan of 3D printing and we use it a lot at Boeing so if you think your team would benefit a lot from it then go for it.

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We just got a new shop at the school with a CNC, 3d scanner, 2 CNC mills, a laser engraver, 2 drill presses, 2 band saws, 2 scroll saws, a table saw, a circular saw, multiple grinders, and many hand tools. We do have access to 3D printers but the process of accessing them and retrieving parts takes more time than it's worth.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

This thread is a real eye-opener for me. There's a world out there we obviously don't know much about. The annual budget for our team is about $8,000. We bought a Bridgeport for $1,100, an old lathe for $175, got most of our tools by begging.

This is not intended as a hostile comment. We have had to learn to work with what we've got, and have been pretty successful; we were in the top 8 at the GSR.

But it's always interesting to see how others are doing it.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

Well our budget this year for the team was $5,000 including the pit and everything we needed as a rookie team but fortunately we were allowed to use the shop at a high school that many team members including myself attend and the school just got a major renovation including the brand new shop. The $10,000 grant is for the engineering teacher who does not know what to spend it on and asked our CEO and me what we would like to have in the shop that would benefit the team and help teach his students about new technology in engineering. Our answer was a 3D printer that we could use for the robot but also could be used to create models of his student's work.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

Get a RepRap. Just one.

Then get the metal parts for at least one more, and print the plastic ones, then build the machine. By the time you're done, I guarantee you'll know that machine inside and out. It's almost as fun as building robot parts.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

This is a 3d printer on kickstarter that has a printing area of 2x2x2 feet

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...e?ref=category

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This is the first year 1706 has used a 3d printer. It is nice, but ours messes up. A lot. It gets very annoying. It's messed up 7 times in a row trying to print out a piece for our hopper to feed the frisbees into our shooter.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

Can you describe the mess-ups in greater detail? I don't want to hijack this thread, so a PM or a new thread might be a good idea. (You may also want to include the type of printer, software, and material.)

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

We (2537) have a 3-D printer, and actually my mechanism is pretty much composed of polycarb and the printed stuff. That being said, my mechanism rarely comes into contact with other parts of the field and is not expected to take a beating. Nor is it expected to be load bearing. What we've found is that they can actually serve as v e r y serviceable motor mounts and that one special "something" that you can't really buy and would be a hassle to machine.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

Is there a lathe in there somewhere? Not saying that this list isn't impressive, but I'm still of the opinion that 10K could be better spent elsewhere. I like the suggestions of assembling your own 3D printer - you'd learn a ton about them and be able to better troubleshoot problems as they come about. It could be a fun off-season project for your team and they definitely cost only a fraction of the full ten thousand.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

I personally have 3 3D printers.

Something I constructed with high accuracy linear actuators and an extruder I designed.

SoliDoodle 2

Up!

SoliDoodle printers with the heated beds are cheap and very RepRap like, but be prepared odds are high you'll be messing around to get them working.

My Up! printer on the other hand works very well and has always worked very well though it's object size is relatively limited.

I am not clear on the durability of the print but the resolution of stereolithography is better than what most of these printers offer. Though the working area is really quite small take a look at the Form1.

The issue you are most likely to have with a 12"x12" work bed is warping. If you try this I encourage you to enclose the unit in something to retain the ambient air temperature around the print.

You may not need such a large work bed, nor the probability of a very long print time, and the risk of ruining it late in the print if you slice and divide your models carefully.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

[quote=techhelpbb;1252737
The issue you are most likely to have with a 12"x12" work bed is warping. If you try this I encourage you to enclose the unit in something to retain the ambient air temperature around the print.[/QUOTE]

Running a heated bed helps with smaller parts. We've yet to try a raft on ours, which is also supposed to help, but the printers do tend to be secured in a warmish and smallish room in the build area.

Then again, our current 12x12 happens to be in pieces due to maintenance; the previous one (which is now elsewhere) worked just fine in a larger unheated room, minimal warping except on very large builds. The 16x16 we also happen to have available has run in the same conditions with similar results.

Bigger build, and this does include some that are well under our maximum bed size, tends to mean more warping issues from our experience. Actually, more issues in general--one of the largest parts for the RepRap is the single part that has given us the most trouble, with probably ten runs attempted to build half a dozen of 'em, in pairs and singly.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

$10k could easily get you a decent used manual mill and lathe that would be FAR more useful for your team.

Re: 3D Printer Advice
 

If you are looking for a commercial machine that is right within your budget I would recommend taking a look at the Stratasys Mojo.

http://www.mojo3dprinting.com/printers/specs.aspx



For 10k it provides all the equipment you need to make quality parts with no tuning required. They may even provide an educational discount so it wouldn't hurt to ask.

Since it is a commercial machine you will get easy to use software, the ability to make complex quality parts, and reliability. You also get soluble support which allows you to make crazy 3D printed parts!

The build size is much smaller than you are looking for, but for most robot applications it should be sufficient. The Mojo also prints parts in ABS plastic which is fine for most robot applications.

This year I printed wheel sprocket spacers, Frisbee pushing "wedge", wedge guide, pneumatic cylinder mount for wedge, bearing blocks for conveyor, bearing block for shooter wheel axle, and a plug for the AndyMark 8" pneumatic wheel for holding a hex shaft.

A few of the parts can be seen in orange below. The material is the same ABS that the Mojo uses, just printed on a different Stratasys 3D printer.