Acquiring a 3D Printer?

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by MrBasse

I have a formlabs printer in my classroom. It makes a lovely paperweight. Out of 60 prints, I had 3 successful jobs. There were so many occlusions and failures I couldn't believe it. Their customer service is near nonexistent. Overall it was the biggest waste of $4k I've every been involved in. Beyond that, the materials are a mess and the end prints are super brittle.

I would stick with FDM all the way.

A Form1, Form1+ or Form2? While I've certainly had my fair share of challenges with my Form1+ in the office, I have a MUCH higher success rate than you are describing. It took some fine tuning and researching, but there are plenty of little tricks that make a big difference.


Just like anything it is a tradeoff. I have seen many budget-friendly FDM printers that are awful - terrible print quality, break downs, jams, you name it. 3D printing is very dynamic marketplace right now, and for consumers that means a lot of potential landmines out there.

-Brando

[jgerstein]

Originally Posted by ImMoMo

So, has anyone had any luck in asking or contacting a company in regards to donating a 3D printer to the their team?

1257 was fortunate with Formlabs and a Form1+, but it helped that Max Lobovsky, the CEO and cofounder, was one of our founding members. Among other uses, we used it to get very smooth wheels for the lift on our elevator in 2015.

Originally Posted by Cothron Theiss

Do you know of any specific teams that use SLS? I know 3824 had a few parts made on an ARCAM machine via EBM for their 2013 bot. It might be interesting to find all the teams that use methods of additive manufacturing other than FDM.

So far, we've only used FDM and SLA parts on our robot. However, this year we may have SLS and/or DMLS access through a sponsor.

I'd also say that there are some FDM variants that are beyond what people think of in that context. In particular, the Markforged printers are FDM, but produce remarkably strong parts - the primary material for a Markforged printer is nylon with continous lengths of carbon fiber as reinforcement.

[otherguy]

Originally Posted by Bald & Bearded

So there are good printers out there less than $400.
Monoprice has there MakerSelect printer (it is a rebranded Wanhao I3) that I can recommend.

I picked one of these up a few months ago for around $350.
I've done quite a few small prints with zero failures and only some minor adjustments from the JetGuy YouTube videos to make sure all my axis were square. I leveled it once haven't done any maintenance yet. All prints are in PLA so far, but I have some ABS I'm gonna try out soon. Also haven't done many large prints yet, but my expectations are high based on other users reviews and videos.

I have to say this is a world of difference over the Makerbit Replicator 2 that we have on the team. I feel like its a dice roll just getting parts to adhere to the bed on that machine. Even with PLA. And this machine is more than 5x cheaper.

If you're looking to spend less than $2k on a printer, I'd definitely suggest checking out the i3 clones out there. I'm very happy with my purchase and there's a great community designing parts and developing mods for new features. Wanhow is also very responsive to the changes the community is making to make the printer work better.
I watched prices for about 6months and in that time they improved the way the extruder was mounted, fixed electrical problems, improved the print bed material, improved the adjustments for bed leveling, changed the way the LCD and button are arranged to make it easier to use. Lots of little things, but its great to see active and quick responses to problems found by end users.

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by marshall

Ouch. I saw their printers at Maker Faire NYC a couple years ago. Good but not great is how I would describe them.

It's a super cool technology, but when every job fails and they tell you that the solution is to buy the new model I'll look elsewhere. We did make a really cool RSL holder that was clear and put an LED ring in it to work as an inocator. That was fun at least. But it took 7 tries to get it to print...

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

A Form1, Form1+ or Form2? While I've certainly had my fair share of challenges with my Form1+ in the office, I have a MUCH higher success rate than you are describing. It took some fine tuning and researching, but there are plenty of little tricks that make a big difference.


Just like anything it is a tradeoff. I have seen many budget-friendly FDM printers that are awful - terrible print quality, break downs, jams, you name it. 3D printing is very dynamic marketplace right now, and for consumers that means a lot of potential landmines out there.

-Brando

It's a Form1+. I messed with it for about 6 months testing everyday. The big problem was that a failure destroyed the print trays so continuing with it actually cost more than our Stratasys Uprint machine. And as most that 3d print know, stratasys is anything but cheap for consumables...

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by MrBasse

It's a Form1+. I messed with it for about 6 months testing everyday. The big problem was that a failure destroyed the print trays so continuing with it actually cost more than our Stratasys Uprint machine. And as most that 3d print know, stratasys is anything but cheap for consumables...

My experience is dramatically different than yours with the same machine. Seems like you've been pretty plugged into trying to fix/tune it, so not sure what else there is to say. I've been using the 2 print trays we have for the past 18 months...

-Brando

[Bald & Bearded]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

3D printing is very dynamic marketplace right now, and for consumers that means a lot of potential landmines out there.

Expanding on this, consumer 3D printing still has a ways to go, to get to the print and forget stage. There are just so many variables and moving parts. Every consumer 3D printer I have seen from $3K to $100 has had some of the same issues.

I have had times when I printed hundreds of parts without a failure, then times when it seemed every part failed on the same printer. Printer parts fail, jam, and wear out. Figuring out where the failure happens and how to quickly solve it brings a lot of details in here.

But this is a great chance to give students hands on troubleshooting and maintenance experience.

We have printed a wide variety of parts. Some performed better than others. We were able to use the failures (both in printing and in operation) as teaching opportunities.

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by Bald & Bearded

So there are good printers out there less than $400.
Monoprice has there MakerSelect printer (it is a rebranded Wanhao I3) that I can recommend.

When choosing a printer avoid:
1. Proprietary filament cartridges
2. Proprietary and closed source software/hardware

Get a printer with:
1. Heated bed
2. All metal hot end if you want to do plastics like Nylon
3. Enclosed build space is nice
4. Wide parts availability

Also, there are some really good kits out there that your students can build as a learning project.

My Maker select arrived yesterday and it pretty good. 4 out of 5 stars so far.

[mman1506]

The Prusa i3 MK2 has been getting killer reviews lately for its reliability and print quality. It's considered by most to be the best hobby grade FDM printer at any price.
http://shop.prusa3d.com/en/3d-printe...3-mk2-kit.html


A review by a highly respected member of the 3d printing community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfe_84FGJ8c

[Chris Hapstack]

I have the privilege of using a SLA printer at work (specifically, a Stratasys Objet30 Pro) and man is it lovely! Unfortunately it costs tens of thousands of dollars and is thus not something a company would likely donate to a FRC team, but if you can find a sponsor who has one then you're in for a treat. I haven't personally used a consumer-level SLA printer like one from Formlabs to compare, but at the industrial level SLA is quite nice.

Upsides: Incredible accuracy and surface finish (can hold tolerances of 0.004"), high strength of finished parts (compared to FDM, at least), and the option to print somewhat flexible parts (the end result being similar to polypropylene) in addition to rigid parts.

Downsides: High cost of resin, long printing times (would take 6-12 hours to print something the size of a tennis ball, depending on what material you're using), and much regular cleaning/upkeep needed to prevent a breakdown.

I will say the long print time is not as big a hurdle as one might think. The key is letting the long prints run overnight and coming in to a tray full of parts in the morning.

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by jgerstein

So far, we've only used FDM and SLA parts on our robot. However, this year we may have SLS and/or DMLS access through a sponsor.

I'd also say that there are some FDM variants that are beyond what people think of in that context. In particular, the Markforged printers are FDM, but produce remarkably strong parts - the primary material for a Markforged printer is nylon with continous lengths of carbon fiber as reinforcement.

In regards to SLS printers they are absolutely amazing. One of our mentors who works at HP was able to throw in our drive train spacers to his print in a nylon SLS printer and it was incredible the tolerances it held. The only down sides are the price to run one of those things and the 24 hour cool down time that the parts need in order to return to room temperature.

[pilleya]

Our school has a few Formlabs SLA printers (1 and 1+). They can produce very good parts, but there is a fair bit of upkeep that is required. I haven’t used them for robot parts, but I have used them to produce small precision parts for F1 In Schools. They seem fairly reliable, and the Design and Technology Department use them as part of their curriculum in which they are used to produce probably around 80-100ish parts per year. That said I probably wouldn’t recommend an SLA printer to a team just wanting to make a few parts here and there.

An FDM printer is going to be quicker, easier and cheaper to run for the style of parts that FRC teams commonly make.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Since this has turned into a 3D printer recommendation thread...

57 won a Makergear M2 in the printer lottery a couple years back, and it's been pretty reliable with good, fast support. Makergear has been diligently but quietly rolling out upgrades over the years that make it even better. The latest revision is supposed to be solid enough that it pretty much never needs bed levelling, which is saying something. I've had to turn the team's back over to the school for various reasons, and went ahead an purchased my own in kit form. They also occasionally have lightly used or refurbished machines for a discount.

I highly recommend splurging the $150 for Simplify3D for the M2 or for any printer supported by S3D. The presets and support generation make it much easier to get successful prints.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I highly recommend splurging the $150 for Simplify3D

OMG YES! If anyone from FIRST is paying attention then get Simplify3D added to the Virtual KOP please! It's amazing software.

[troy_dietz]

Originally Posted by marshall

OMG YES! If anyone from FIRST is paying attention then get Simplify3D added to the Virtual KOP please! It's amazing software.

+∞
They do have a bulk educational license option, but you only really need one license. (which can be used on 2 computers simultaneously)

It's amazing to see the difference between other popular slicers and S3D. Even with identical settings, the S3D prints almost always turn out better. It can even generate .x3g and .makerbot (for the Replicator gen 5) files, and S3D has a much better interface than the Makerware.