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Brad - That's a cool machine. But, at the price of ~$6k (I didn't do the maths, but last I looked…) I could put CNC on my 9 x 36 mill. And, oddly enough, I've been doing some research re that. Granted it wouldn't be as flexible as the 5AxisMaker. Anyway, thanks. I'll watch for news about that.
Gary keeps talking about how far electronics and peripherals have come in recent years.
Think about what cell phones and graphics cards were like in 2009, and how far they have come since this video was made.
That's got to be a 200 pound billet reduced to chips.
Here's a little blurb about how Formlabs is changing the way they do support structure to make it lighter, use less material, time and increase resolution by better supporting the piece.
It seems Makerbot is coming out with a line of filled PLA for their machines.
By changing the printhead, I'll assume because the iron, brass whatever needs more heat and the filament has more body because of the dust it's mixed with.
Hadn't read about the change in support structure - thanks. I think the algorithm they wrote is what is called a "splicer", which determines how the product will be printed and what support structures it needs. The magazine I mentioned talked about some printers being able to run different splicers, and some of the splicers do a better job than others.
As for the material in the PLA, I've read about limestone, brass, and iron. But hadn't read about wood. Interesting. But, as you say, surely the extruder needs to be different due to the differing parameters of the material being used. Lots of iron or brass would take more heat. And I would think viscosity would change as well.
Yes, the CES brings out lots of new things. My nephew is out there and I'm hoping to get to debrief him this weekend. In fact, im hoping to talk to both of my brother's sons. That one has a job with a company that makes robotics and the components there of. And the other is, at times, working on a '50 Chevy pickup. Also, he's into Arduinos, and I'm planning to use one to monitor oil pressure and water temp, and probably intake air temp as well as outside air temp as I'm curious how well the ACTS maintains the air temp.
My experience with Makerbot and PLA was not very good. I am in my last semester of my undergrad for Mech Eng and we had to design a car completely made on makerbot. The PLA material was used on a Makerbot Replicator 5th Generation. The quality is OK but it is nothing up to what I would wanna put on my truck. That being said I also used a Makerbot Replicator 2X loaded with ABS and those parts are definitely production quality.
Japrine - That's a huge difference! The magazine I referenced had the Replicator 2 as its #2 unit with a score of 37 vs #1's score of 39. And the 5th Gen came in, predictably, 5th with a score of 34. So, is the main difference in the PLA vs ABS? Is PLA short for Playdoh?
Ron - Look what I found:
Oops, uploading isn't working. I'll text the pics to you.
Looks like it is a local problem. I had run speed test earlier but when it showed download speed of 20+ Mb I killed it. Been suffering all day on FTE but just tried gmail and it took forever to upload the pics to Ron. Reran speed test and my download is still 20 Mbs, but my upload is .13 Mbs. Yeah, 130 Kb! Time to call it in…. Oh, and this is written while using cellular.
Japrine - That's a huge difference! The magazine I referenced had the Replicator 2 as its #2 unit with a score of 37 vs #1's score of 39. And the 5th Gen came in, predictably, 5th with a score of 34. So, is the main difference in the PLA vs ABS? Is PLA short for Playdoh?
Ron - Look what I found:
Oops, uploading isn't working. I'll text the pics to you.
HAHAHAH yes the PLA may as well be play-doh, it looks exactly like hot glue when you see it extruding. I would imagine that the ABS on the 5th gen would do better but we didn't get to try it.
There are other differences though that are much better with the Replicator 2X. It is enclosed on all sides of the machine and the platform is heated. I think these factors are huge for the quality. The 5th gen is completely open to the environment so the heat is completely lost to ambient. The platform is glass and is not heated during printing either. All in all the only advantages the 5th gen has is that the platform is a bit bigger and you can plug in a usb drive, the 2X needs an SD card
Well, you've confirmedwhat I've read - the only way to get reasonable results is with a heated glass build platform and in a controlled environment. Fortunately some of the better printers are coming that way out of the box.
