Re: Printing out robot parts
 

At our school we have the personal uprint, it prints white only, but also prints a support material. You have to buy a clean station separately which dissolves the support material. The machine works very well, only problem being that the plastic adds up really fast, I think each spool is 30 cubic in, and each cubic inch is $5, and cubic inches go buy really fast. We just got it right before the summer, so hopefully this year our team can use it for some quick prototyping ( our school is making us pay for plastic, not machine time though)

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

Definitely the UPrint. While there are countless machines on the market, some cheaper (however less professional, ex: the makerbot), the UPrint seems to be the most cost-effective 3d Printer for personal use on the market.
You can find it here.

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

I believe we may have had some parts printed on a U-print, or a dimension, they are very high quality but I will agree it gets expensive fast. The images I added earlier were printed by Stratasys.

The makerbots do have their merits being lower cost to entry, I believe Aren hill has done some fairly extensive research on budget 3d printing for the Iowa State University robotics team.

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

We printed replacement tops to our joysticks because we didn't like where the buttons were.

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

Thanks, folks!

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

As a 3d print service provider I have much experience with Dimension/Stratasys machines.

If the uPrint fits or uPrint Plus fits your budget then you will have a great machine on your hands especially if you need end use parts.

If you have any questions about these machines let me know. Email me direct at printo3d ( at ) printo3d ( dot ) com

Don't let the price fool you. All said and done with all the bits you are talking $19 to $24k. They should have educational discounts so don't forget to ask. Also if time isn't of essence you might want to wait until your local dealer releases a demo unit to save some money. Used units from the dealer should still include the standard new warranty.

Exactly how many thousands of dollars do you have? :D Don't forget to add dozen or so material cartridges into your initial purchase.

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

I don't know how many thousands of dollars, exactly -- that's why I came here to find out how many thousands of dollars I'd need to have! :)

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

If you've got time during the off season, what about a Thing O Matic. It's a DIY open source 3d printer for around 1500.

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

I think that's more our speed... We'll see!

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

I'm going to throw in another good word for Dimension/Stratasys Machines.

We have an SST1200 in my department at work that I use pretty regularly for parts and a BST768 at the School that we can also use for parts. (I prefer the 1200 because it's much, much faster) The school's machine was bought with grant money in 2006/2007, and was somewhere around 25k. I believe they've come down quite a bit in price.

I've found that the printer is great for making spacers and other little parts that don't see much load. I think I made something like 18 spacers for our drive last year and they came out to all of .1lbs.

We're also looking at getting a Fortus Machine at work that can print in Polycarbonate along with some high strength ABS blends. From what I've seen, the Polycarbonate is strong enough for some FRC uses. The machine starts around 80/90k or so.

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

The Fortus machines are nice, but do escalate in price quickly. You have to specify a single material that it will print when it comes from the factory (ABS, ABS+, ABSi, ULTEM, PC, etc.) and then for the ability to print in each additional material its about an additional $15K/material.

Objet (http://www.objet.com/) makes some seriously cool machines. The surface finish and resolution is absolutely incredible, you need to see the parts to really appreciate it. They also allow you to print in "rubber-like" materials of varying durometers (and even blend materials to really tune the softness). I've been told New Balance uses these machines to print out entire sneakers and wear them around to get a feel for the rubber souls of the shoes. These machines are expensive as well, on par with the Fortus style printers.

Just some more fun 3D printing info.

-Brando

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

The cost effectiveness of these machines compared to picking up a decent used mill/lathe, or a quality mini mill/lathe seems so minimal. 3d printing spacers? per price that must be awful, and spacers are really quick for kids to bang out on a lathe.

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

If they have the money allocated for "a 3D printer", I think that a 3D printer is probably the best thing they can get with the money. :P

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that since we weren't really all that concerned with price when I got the machine quoted. One of the other downsides is that you can't combine certain material options due to different heats or something. By the way, have you ever played with Ultem? I have 'break stick' on my desk that's about 1/8" thick and I still haven't been able to break it.

IIRC, when I ran the numbers on our spacers, they cost ~$5 to make (Used a hair over a cubic inch of material at $4.54 per cubic inch) and took about an hour to make in the machine. Considering that I was able to run them while I was at work, it seemed like a win win for everyone.

Re: Printing out robot parts
 

Some of the popular low budget/"hobby grade" machines:

MakerBot http://www.makerbot.com (Low cost, but requires lots of software tuning)

UP http://pp3dp.com/ (Over twice the price of the Makerbot, but the software package is supposedly great. They also continually update the software).

Bites From Bytes http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/ (Recently purchased by one of the largest 3d printing manufactures.)

Ultimaker https://shop.ultimaker.com/ (Very large print volume)

These companies all have nice kits or complete ready to use machines and can be had for under $5k.

This is only a small list, but the most popular companies. These hobby 3d printers are sprouting up constantly like mushrooms on a rainy day. :)

Also if you notice nearly all of these companies producing low cost 3d printers use FDM "Fused Deposition Modeling" technology.