3D Printer Advice

[Trent B]

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.

[fb39ca4]

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.

[Dale]

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/

[Metalcrafters]

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

[Lil' Lavery]

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.

[Darren Collins]

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.

[thefro526]

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.

[RyanShoff]

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.

[kristinweiss]

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!

[engunneer]

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.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

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.

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.

[kristinweiss]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

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.

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.

[jimwick]

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.

[kristinweiss]

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.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by NorthernTaco

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.

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.