pic: 1156 3D Printed Wheel

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

Ding ding ding.

Dimension needs to take plastic filament and load it into each cartridge and assembly the other components (PCBA, rubber drive wheel) into it as we'll.

They're also probably making their margin on top of the cost of doing that.

-Brando

I can confirm that the cartridge is, in fact, one of the main reasons that Dimension's Material is usually more expensive than other printing options.

I ran an SST1200 for a little over 3 years before we switched to a Fortus 400mc this past fall at work. In our pricing negotiations, we tried to see if there was any way that the material costs could be driven down, and we were told that it couldn't, although ABS for the 400 is actually about 16% cheaper than it was for the Dimension. I was told that this was because that even though the 400's Canister is 'more expensive' to make, it holds more material (92 Cubic Inches), effectively lessening the effect of the Canister's increased cost... And for those of you complaining about Material Costs, we've got something that is ~$7.50 per cubic inch of model and support... eek.

It's really great to see teams making some important end use parts using 3D printing. With the right machine and a little know how, a lot of lower load parts can be swapped out to printed equivalents and still work really well.