Re: pic: Team 3824 Robot
 

Yea I was assuming you can't just go out and buy this printer ourselves.

How much does the chassis weigh compared to if you made it out of metal? Or is that something that you can't fully calculate?

Re: pic: Team 3824 Robot
 

Somebody somewhere said that the company wants to commercialize them soon, but I'd guess they will cost well over $100K, so out of the reach of all but the richest teams, or those with a sponsor interested in the machine for whatever reason.

As for weight, I can't speak for the team but I'd guess it would be very lightweight, probably even lighter than our laser-cut plywood bot (which was 105 w/ electronics and mechanisms).

Re: pic: Team 3824 Robot
 

Challenge accepted.

Re: pic: Team 3824 Robot
 

I should say it could be lighter, if they wanted. It would make more sense to use a little more weight than required for extra robustness. I would think they could technically get away with an almost skeletal frame, whereas with our wood we need boxes.

Re: pic: Team 3824 Robot
 

Coming from a close-by team, I cannot speak with certainty of their bot's weight, but their head mentor said at SMR it weighed roughly 117lbs (with everything); In addition my team had bin arms printed out of the stuff, and both arms (which were 100% solid) weighed under a pound :D .

The key to this material is not just its weight, but rather the complexity and speed at which items can be built. Example being our bin-arm, compared to traditional techniques, printing in the carbon-fiber ABS allowed us to CAD and manufacture a precision part in under a day (without waiting, total time from concept to final product was roughly 3 hours :ahh: )

Re: pic: Team 3824 Robot
 

A large 3D printer is not a terribly complex thing to build. The BOM cost for something like this could be as low as $5000. For some inspiration, look at the Part Daddy from SeeMecnc. http://3dprinteros.com/wp-content/up...Faire-2014.jpg They use aluminum t-slot extrusion for their linear rails and have an arduino controlling NEMA 34 Stepper motors for motion control. Toss in some SSR's for temperature control of the extruder and you have most of the parts.