Helix 3D printers!

[ekapalka]

Hey! It has just come to my knowledge that Acuity Design in my team's town of Missoula Montana is having a KickStarter campaign! They helped out out throughout the last build season by offering us pretty much any 3D printed thing we needed (we didn't exploit this as much as we could have). Apparently, the ones they were using back then were prototypes, built in someone's garage, and they're now striving to produce new, higher quality printers. The next generation, Helix printers, are faster, cheaper, higher volume, and higher quality than their prototype printers as well as many other commercial/professional printers. I just wanted to help get the word out. Thanks all :)

[yash101]

I want one of those! It seems better than our $10,000 school 3D printer. THe build capacity is just so large, there are endless capabilities for this product. Also, If they are being truthful, I think this printer will be "high quality, dirt cheap!)
I want to order one as soon as it is available. A nice thing is that this printer is so large, you can print an entire 3D printer using this. Then, you will have a 3D printer to give to your friend!

[runneals]

This looks like a real cool company, and even neater 3-D printer! Hopefully their pricing be comparable with the MakerBot, so I can get one eventually when I'm not a broke college student. If they are looking to make some additional money for the startup (and test their machines), I'm sure that FTC & FRC teams would be interested in sending in models for printing

[Bald & Bearded]

This printer does have an enormous build area and with the use of the lead screws excellent X/Y accuracy with little backlash. I am just not sold on the price point. At $6800 (based on discounts claimed in the kickstarter rewards) it is over 10 times the cost of a Prusa I3 kit and 5 times the cost of an openbeam kossel pro. Now they are 3x or so the build area of the typical MakerBot and only a bit more than 3X/4X the cost.

The one thing to note is that it still only does 100 micron (0.1mm) layer heights in its high def mode. That is the same as most opensource printers. Also, I would expect the same warping on large parts as on any printer so the build area will let you print lots of small (but maybe tall) things.
Speed and faster printing are always good but to what cost. I did not see what size nozzle they were using and that is another limiting factor of any design in terms of x/y resolution.

I do like that they plan to opensource their design when done. And I will be watching things close to see more details on their extruder design.

[yash101]

Plus, there is tax. That means that the printer would be nearly 7000 bucks. Also, what is the quality of the prints? our school 3D printer rarely has warping because it is just that high of a quality! But our school printer, as I know, only supports ABS . Also, what is the build-aid material? In our printer, it uses some black substance which will be eaten up by a chemical and that makes things easier to do. However, if it preforates ABS and uses that, it would be hard to make a working prototype of many things which are mostly enclosed!