This year we have access to the following printers at our shop:
Stratasys Fortus 380mc
We primarily use the Fortus for production ASA and Nylon 12 parts. Our 2023 robot had a couple of parts from this machine, surprisingly we had our radio mount break at the FIN state championship, it was printed with solid ASA.
Our carriage stiffeners are currently printed out of Nylon12, we went through ~8 polycarbonate stiffeners that continually cracked/failed. The 3D printed stiffeners have not failed after ~50 matches and multiple months of practice.
We also printed arm/wrist components out of ULTEM9085, including gearing and mounting brackets.
Stratasys Origin One
This is a new printer for 461 this year, we’re primarily stocking Dura56 from Loctite/Henkel and ST45 from BASF.
We have some experimental (to us) elastomeric materials as well but do not expect to use these materials in 2024 for our competition robot.
I am excited to try out some BJB polyurethanes to mold custom wheels but I don’t expect we’ll complete any projects before the season begins.
Bambu Lab P1S
We have our four team colors in PLA+ on this printer. We primarily are using this for our FTC teams and FRC prototypes. A few of our FLL teams have also requested parts for their projects this year.
Bambu Lab X1C
We have PLA-CF, PLA-support, PAHT-CF and PA-support loaded in our X1C, we have tested these materials during the off-season and expect to use them on our competition robot in 2024.
Two Artillery Sidewinders
Used for PLA+ parts, similar to the P1S. We used some PLA+ parts for spacers on our 2023 competition robot.
Lulzbot Taz
Used for PLA+ parts, similar to the P1S.
Ender 3 Pro V2
Primarily used to teach students about 3D printing, not actively being used for any projects at this time. This is a great starter printer (imo) and even better when it goes on-sale at Microcenter for $100.
Not pictured:
Photon Zero
This is a great printer to try LCD/resin-based printing however do not expect your parts to come out accurate. Another great printer for learning but not for real robot parts YMMV.
Makerbot Replicator 2
One of the team’s original 3D printers, not really used anymore and sits in storage.
Currently air is circulated ~5/hour in our room and we have a separate air filter for our Origin One Industrial to ensure safety.
@Peyton_Yeung and I are the primary 3D printing mentors for 461, we’re happy to answer any questions or collaborate.
How did you acquire such an amazing lineup? Did the team buy all these machines?
Also, my team recently was donated a Stratasys Objet 24, uPrint, and Mojo (unopened still in the box) and don’t really quite know what to do with them. We feel they aren’t useful for us today because of the proprietary nature of the printers combined with the expensive filament, and we haven’t had any luck trying to sell them. Any recommendations?
Disclaimer This is my opinion and in no way reflects the opinion of my employer, Stratasys.
The Fortus 380mc and Origin One Industrial are from Stratasys stock that cannot be sold or donated (think returns or early R&D production tests), the 461 shop is setup as a Stratasys lab. Everything else has been purchased by the team or a mentor.
Mojo is honestly one of the best machines out there in regard to quality of printed parts, unfortunately Stratasys stopped manufacturing material for it about a year ago and we’ve been running on our existing stock since. Currently I don’t see anything in US inventory, and unfortunately the extruder is attached to the material spools… We had ~100 of these printers in-stock last year that we could have donated to FIRST Choice, however we elected not to due to the discontinuance of material production.
uPrint is still a great printer today, I printed a multitude of ABS materials back when I had one at my house. You should be able to print ASA on it as well, using the default settings. The hardest part is fitting a spool in the print cartridge.
You probably won’t be able to get the Objet 24 running, unfortunately. If you did, there isn’t much I would want to use it for on a FIRST team.
This is amazing! We just bought 6 new Prusa MK4s as we sell off the old MK3S+. I really want a couple of Bambus. How long have you had them? How do they hold up with students? They look so amazing. I have 2 Mark 2s and Metal X, but I really want a Stratasys F120, We are hoping to get a Polyjet J55 printer for the 2nd semester.
It looks like you have an amazing Line up!!!
I just got down building a mobile makerspace for the local boys and girls club that has two Ultimaker S7s and 4 Prusa MK4s.
How are you guys liking your X1C and P1S? I’m looking at buying a P1S to use in part to produce parts for my team. Have you guys had any issues with the printers or with Bambu support?
We love our Bambu printers and have not experienced any issues after ~150 hours of printing on both. They’re real workhorses and the best part is that they work right out of the box. We’ve used primarily Bambu Lab, eSun and Inland filament, our plan is to switch to exclusively using Bambu filament just for ease of use in the AMS. Also their filament membership program seems to be a pretty good deal.
The printer self-checks itself for problems and as long as you follow the well-documented instructions on the wiki I don’t see us ever having to reach out to support. So far, the X1C has had one problem with its belts, which we fixed by adjusting a single screw on the outside. The X1C also told us to grease the Z-Screws because it sensed that they needed it (this happened yesterday). We have had zero maintenance notifications from the P1S so far.
We manage both Bambu printers off one email account, so our students and mentors can check on or use the printers at any point. I think the majority of our 3D printing students are using the app on their phone to monitor, then we have Bambu Studio installed on our Linux computers to process parts. At this point we’ve all but given these printers to the students to operate and maintain.
I neglected to mention that before printing our PAHT-CF we’ve been running the filament through a filament dryer. We’ve had a lot of success using the FIXDRY NT2 from Amazon.
When printing with nylon, drying your material properly makes a HUGE difference. It matters for your standard materials as well (PLA, PETG, etc.), but Nylon is much more hygroscopic.
