Professional 3D printers vs Makerbot

[Tasty Bento]

I've been looking at some professional 3D printers, mainly focusing on
FDM, like the ones from Dimension and Objet to see what kind of
features they have that might be worth trying to incorporate into
future open source printer designs. From my incomplete study I see
these kinds of things:

1. The capability to print easy-to-remove support material along with
the main material so that gaps and overhangs are fully possible.
2. Multiple colors in one print.
3. Cartridge-based materials for keeping the spools dirt-free and
moisture-free
4. Auto-alignment and test extrusion of print nozzle
5. More turnkey software for printing from STL files
6. Multiple materials in one print
7. Easy to replace print heads
8. Quiet operation (?)
9. Network connectivity
10. Factory calibration (maybe auto calibration?)

What do you think about the relative value of these features, and what
might be missing? I'm sure there are some folks who have real world
experience of pro-printers (I don't) so I'm really interested in your
opinions.

All the best,

Ben

[Roger Walsberg]

Ben

  I work at Cirrus Aviation in the Advanced development group. We have a Dimension machine here with a million miles on it. I'd like to add my 2 cents worth concerning your list.

 1) Support material is a must!

 2) Not really necessary as these are prototypes and would get sanded, prepped and painted custom colors for a specific use. Lets face it, if you are making a concept part for a car, motorcycle, etc, you want it to match and blend in. No color you would sell will do that. If you are making rapid prototype parts for function, then the color really doesn't matter. Colors are cool, but a gimmick.

 3) Toss-up. I'd settle for a huge roll of material for constant printing. Maybe use a wiper to clean it. If you put the material in a cartridge, it will cost more. Does ABS absorb enough water to screw up a print? The stratasys cartridges are not sealed against humidity.

 4) Good idea.

 5) Good

 6) could be versatile

 7) simple is better! simpler could make it easily replaceable. Modular?.

 8) Quiet is good. Precision components will make it quieter. I added acme rods and nuts to my Z stage. It cut the noise in half !

 9) good

 10) good

 

Out of the box operation with software is key. MB has WAY to many settings. Rock solid mechanics and electronics would eliminate them maybe.

 

If you have any specific questions pertaining to our Stratasys. I'd be glad to answer them.

   Roger

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Thanks. Roger

[Zach Smith]

Hey Ben,

Thanks for the suggestions. Your list looks suspiciously like our
internal list. Have you been spying on us?!? ;)

Anyway, we are definitely looking at most of those (and a few more
that will knock your socks off). There are even a few things on that
list that are in production as I write this and will launch in the
next month or so.

Cheers,
Zach

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[Gian Pablo]

11. Standalone operation with a status display
12. Self-calibration
13. Easier access to physical adjustments (idler wheel tension, motor
removal, extruder removal)

[Ethan Dicks]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Gian Pablo <gian....@gmail.com> wrote:
> 11. Standalone operation with a status display

That's available now as an add-on, but you have to roll your own box
and grab a not-yet-standard version of the firmware.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2836

A friend of mine lasercut an enclosure for me from some 3mm ABS sheet,
and I've ordered the necessary keypad and LCD from Australia - it
should be here in 1-2 weeks. I look forward to some tetherless
printing.

-ethan

[Tasty Bento]

Thanks for the ideas. One other question I had, which has been bugging
me - why are all these pro printers so expensive? A Dimension desktop
printer is $15,000! Is it that they don't sell that many, or is it
that they are actually very expensive to make? Thoughts? What do you
think must be the most expensive part? The plastruder?

Ben

On Jun 8, 11:21 am, Tasty Bento <bengi...@comcast.net> wrote:

[Bo Lorentzen]

Two main reasons.

1. Dimention ships with a very ready to use software/hardware package, you pay for getting ready to play toys.

2. The engineers designing these and writing the software (and there are more than 3-4 on the projects) get paid real money for their work. that money gotta come from somewhere.

3. the company have to recoup their investment before companies like MakerBot catches up and start to ship MB 2.0 which will give them a serious run for their money.

Capitalism

Bo

Sent from my iPad

[Tasty Bento]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for your comments. Here's some more thoughts:

1) I think that having support material would make Makerbot an order
of magnitude better too.
2) Agree - sanding and painting is a next logical step for mock ups.
For some applications though I'd still like to have even a quick mock
up have different colors within it. e.g., a consumer electronics
device in black with its buttons in white. Not essential though I
agree.
3) I love the large spool of plastic. People I've shown it to like it
too.

So, how do we do #1? Two side by side nozzles with separate feeds?

Ben

> > makerbot+u...@googlegroups.com<makerbot%2Bunsubscribe@googlegroups.c om>
> > .

[Revar Desmera]

Pretty much all the pro FDM printers seem to use side-by-side extruders, one for build material, one for support material. This isn't hard to do with a paxtruder 0.4. What's missing is slicing software support to switch extruder tools and horizontally offset by a bit. Also, does anybody know what that hot-water soluble plastic is the pro printers use for support material?

- Revar

> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to makerbot+u...@googlegroups.com.

[Steven Dick]

Another feature we could use would be a heated (and partially insulated) build chamber.
I've found that ambient temperature has almost as much effect on warping as the heated build platform does,
and heating the chamber even as little as 30 or 40c would probably be more than enough to have a dramatic effect on buid quality.


As to multiple colors -- I suspect that this could be a lot easier than you might think.
I have had moderate success in coloring specific parts of models just by knowing the length of material needed to build various parts of it and pre-coloring the filament in the right spots.  There's three problems with this:
a) You have to know exactly how long of a section to color
b) you have to know the delay (in length) between the nozzle and the spot where you can start coloring
c) colors mix in the nozzle, and don't exactly start and stop suddenly

Of course, solubility of the die in the plastic is also important for this method.

A shorter melt volume would help.  If you wanted to automate the coloring, it might be possible to place die
injectors somewhere in the path and drip it in or paint it on....just have to very very carefully control die volume and location, and do a lot more calculation in software, or perhaps just worry about coloring the whole part and not regions.

Precise positioning of the dies would be very difficult, but if you wanted to get it more or less right or get large sections of the part (or do smooth color transitions over several layers), it'd be easy.
While this would be really cool, I do think it is a bit of a gimmick...  but I think you could get a very wide variety of quite controllable color with just three or four die injectors and a few cheap but carefully selected dies.

[Brent Crosby]

We used different colored sharpies to color the natural abs filament.
It worked surprisingly well :)

[Jerry Isdale]

List looks good - its hard to wait to see what Zach et al release this
summer. I saw the MK5 extruder tests at NYC Resistor and was very
impressed. A feed mechanism that works consistently will greatly
improve my experience with the Cupcake.

On Jun 8, 8:41 pm, Tasty Bento <bengi...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Thanks for the ideas. One other question I had, which has been bugging
> me - why are all these pro printers so expensive?

One major area is the mechanical rig. The Cupcake uses very simple
plywood, inexpensive drive motors, platforms, etc. Making a sheet
metal & plastic housing would increase the price (and weight). The
drive system could use expensive steppers (quality, reproducibility,
etc) with optical encoders for feedback, etc.

There are a variety of technologies used in commercial printers -
extruded abs is kinda rare. The accuracy of some of these is
significantly higher than our plastic noodles... with higher accuracy
positioning, etc required.

[Steven Dick]

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Brent Crosby <br...@crystalfontz.com> wrote:

We used different colored sharpies to color the natural abs filament.
It worked surprisingly well :)

I agree...except that brief contact with a sharpie won't give you enough pigment for most of the colors.
Now if you could figure out how to apply the sharpie die at the right concentration automatically...
I've considered designing a pen holder that would help.

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Jerry Isdale <isd...@gmail.com> wrote:

  A feed mechanism that works consistently will greatly
improve my experience with the Cupcake.

I thought I saw a motorized spool winder for that purpose somewhere in thingiverse?

 

Another item I've seen that might help would be a stepper motor extruder.
If you could accurately reverse and then go forward to match, it would help a lot.
If we could characterize nozzle ooze, and then go so many steps forward for so many seconds of not extruding, it would help.

[Tasty Bento]

Yes, I do. Stratasys kindly tell us exactly what it is:

A water-soluble thermoplastic composition which melts to an extrudable
fluid at a temperature in the range of 120-410 C. and takes a solid
form at room temperature, the composition comprising poly (2-ethyl-2-
oxazoline); a water-soluble alcohol plasticizer; and a polar polymer
selected from the group consisting of compounds having nitrile
functional groups, compounds having ether and hydroxyl functional
groups, and mixtures thereof, wherein the weight percentage of the
polar polymer is between 0.5 and 5 weight percent of the total
thermoplastic composition.

The water-soluble thermoplastic composition can also include an inert
filler, wherein the inert filler is selected from the polyner filler
group consisting of calcium carbonate, glass spheres, graphite, carbon
black, carbon fiber, glass fiber, talc, wollastonite, mica, alumina,
silica and silicon carbide. It could also include a polar polymer
selected from the group consisting of compounds having nitrile
functional groups, compounds having ether and hydroxyl functional
groups, and mixtures thereof, wherein the weight percentage of the
polar polymer is between 0.5 and 5 percent of the total thermoplastic
composition.

(Source: US Patent 6437034)

Their patents are actually loaded with instructions on different
substances.

They also mention poly (2ethyl2 oxazoline) which can be bought from
here, although it looks expensive (100g for $25.10 - maybe you cut it
with talc?):

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/ProductDetail.do?D7=0&N5=SEARCH_CONCAT_PNO|BRAND_KEY&N4=372846|ALDRICH&N25=0&QS=ON&F=SPEC

In more searching, I found that the RepRap guys had discussed this too
here: http://dev.forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,29187,29322,quote=1

Polyvinyl Alcohol might also be an option. You can buy large amounts
here: http://www.soapgoods.com/Polyvinyl-Alcohol-p-713.html?gclid=CKqJ5JShnKICFR49gwodfTj4vQ
in power form. It has interesting melting point and is water soluble.
It would have to be mixed with a bit of water (how much?) and extruded
by using the Frostruder (http://blog.makerbot.com/2010/05/14/
introducing-the-makerbot-industries-frostruder-mk2/) with a narrow
nozzle. You could maybe steal some of the patent ideas and add talcum
power to the mix. I've no idea if it'd work but it might.

Anyone else worked this one out?

Ben


It might also be water soluble wax like from here: http://www.freemanwax.com/solublewax.htm

On Jun 8, 10:32 pm, Revar Desmera <revar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Pretty much all the pro FDM printers seem to use side-by-side extruders, one for build material, one for support material.  This isn't hard to do with a paxtruder 0.4. What's missing is slicing software support to switch extruder tools and horizontally offset by a bit.   Also, does anybody know what that hot-water soluble plastic is the pro printers use for support material?
>
>         - Revar
>

> On Jun 8, 2010, at 9:14 PM, Tasty Bento <bengi...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi Roger,
>
> > Thanks for your comments. Here's some more thoughts:
>

> > 1) I think that having support material would makeMakerbotan order

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> >> --
> >> Thanks. Roger
>
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[Tasty Bento]

I'm looking forward to seeing what you've got!

I'd like to add another item to the list:

11 (or 12, 13, etc) - ability to print bigger items.

There was some discussion of a "wide MakerBot" back in 2009 or a
MakerBot XL as I've been calling it in my head. Any chance of that
coming out at all? The 8cm/10cm limit is frustratingly short of what I
need for my work, which would be ideally 18cm but 15cm might do it in
the either the X or Y axis. (Think handheld consumer electronics).
Height doesn't bother me so much.

Ben

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[Thomas Charron]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Tasty Bento <beng...@comcast.net> wrote:
> I've been looking at some professional 3D printers, mainly focusing on
> FDM, like the ones from Dimension and Objet to see what kind of
> features they have that might be worth trying to incorporate into
> future open source printer designs. From my incomplete study I see
> these kinds of things:

Your list is missing one HUGE thing that they have. Precision flow
control of the plastic. As an example, when a Dimension head picks
up, which it does often, there aren't any unsightly blobs. And when
you build a peice up, say, 5 inches, it's strait as a nail on the
edge.

If you'd like, I can show you some close up images of output from
our machines at work. I may be able to coax one of the mechanical guy
to print something I can also print on the makerbot, to give you a
comparison.

--
-- Thomas

[Dave M.]

I'm going a little off-topic, but flow control is definitely something
that would be nice to add. Do you know if anyone has checked to see
if the optical sensor in a mouse is able to see the ABS filament as it
leaves the toothed pulley?

I started looking into using the optical sensor in mice for a side
project, but you can't get a sensor without buying in quantities of
600. I then thought to buy the dev kit for the sensors, but you have
to buy those in lots of 13! Perhaps the smartest thing to do is just
pull the insides from of a mouse and rig it to the MK4/5 to see if it
even works at all.

On Jun 13, 9:17 am, Thomas Charron <twaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Andrew Plumb]

You can get ADNS-2610 in single quantities from DigiKey or just buy a regular off-the-shelf optical mouse for parts. Most of them use Avago or something pin-compatible.

The offset DIP pins are a real pain, so in between everything else I've started capturing an OpenSCAD model of it so it can be diff'd out of a printed socket: http://github.com/clothbot/eda/tree/master/openscad/libraries/avago/

Andrew.

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--

"The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed" -- William Gibson

Me: http://clothbot.com/wiki/

[Cathal Garvey]

If you're using a stepper driven extruder, you should know how much feed you're getting by default, right? Assuming it hasn't stripped that is. And it may be easier to check whether you have flow by using a rubber roller on the filaments: the makerbot filaments is pretty reflective so it might be difficult to measure by light?

---
Sent from my beloved Android phone.

On 14 Jun 2010 15:15, "Andrew Plumb" <and...@plumb.org> wrote:

You can get ADNS-2610 in single quantities from DigiKey or just buy a regular off-the-shelf optical mouse for parts.  Most of them use Avago or something pin-compatible.

The offset DIP pins are a real pain, so in between everything else I've started capturing an OpenSCAD model of it so it can be diff'd out of a printed socket: http://github.com/clothbot/eda/tree/master/openscad/libraries/avago/

Andrew.

On 2010-06-14, at 9:59 AM, Dave M. wrote:

> I'm going a little off-topic, but flow control is defi...

--

"The future is already here.  It's just not very evenly distributed" -- William Gibson

Me: http://clothbot.com/wiki/

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MakerBot Operators...

[Stan Seibert]

Short timescale flow control is also challenging. The extruder system
can build up pressure like a balloon, which adds hysteresis to the
flow rate at the nozzle relative to the extruder motor going on and
off. I know Oozebane is supposed to compensate for this, but I've
never figured out how to tune it properly for my MakerBot.

I'm not sure where the mechanical energy is being stored exactly. If
most of it is in compression of the solid filament, then I am very
worried that the flow rate will have large hysteresis with the Bowden-
style feed planned for the Mk5 plastruder. Does anyone working on
that R&D know if this is an issue?

[JohnA.]

I know the reprap guys talk about having to re-write a lot of their
reversal code to deal with the bowden length / hysteresis issue in one
of the videos I've seen where they're demoing the bowden extruder.

From what I've seen in pics, the mk5 that was being tested wasn't
bowden style: it was mk4 style but smaller with a threaded gear,
adjustable tension, and new dinos (er... arches).

(like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/makerbot/4625222284/ )

JohnA.

[Stan Seibert]

Whoa, I hope that spindle kit comes out soon!

[Zach Smith]

Its in production, so as soon as we get it back from the factory,
we'll put it up. :)

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>

--
Zach Smith
MakerBot Industries

[JohnA.]

For the record, the spindle kit works great! I guess the cat's out of
the bag.

We've had one for a week or two and I just ordered parts to build up a
second one. Lots of pics here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/botbuilder/sets/72157624231182484/


JohnA.

[ddurant]

> Its in production, so as soon as we get it back from the factory,
> we'll put it up. :)

I was drooling over the flickr pictures earlier today. Looking forward
to getting my hands on one!

If it's not too early to ask, how do you load it up? Like, say you
guys start shipping mauve ABS and I have some strange desire to get
5LBs of it. Do I have to rewind it onto the spindle?

> > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/makerbot?hl=en.
>
> --
> Zach Smith
> MakerBot Industries- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Diddly-wompus]

> Now if you could figure out how to apply the sharpie die at the right
> concentration automatically...
> I've considered designing a pen holder that would help.

i Like that idea! let me know if your idea gains feasibility!

-Dan

[JohnA.]

I can tell you how we loaded ours up (assuming it's built and you have
an existing spool on there, as in your example)

- remove box top
- remove 4 nuts from box bottom that hole the turntable bearing in
- remove spindle with bearing attached
- remove top of spindle
- slide old spool off, slide new spool on
- reverse the first few steps.

It sounds like a lot but it's not, especially since it holds 5lb rolls
handily. You can also stack up to 3 boxes easily.

(all unofficially, ymmv, etc.)

JohnA.

[Ethan Dicks]

On 6/14/10, ddurant <ddur...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Its in production, so as soon as we get it back from the factory,
>> we'll put it up. :)

Looking forward to it!

> If it's not too early to ask, how do you load it up? Like, say you
> guys start shipping mauve ABS and I have some strange desire to get
> 5LBs of it. Do I have to rewind it onto the spindle?

I would buy mauve ABS!

-ethan

[Revar Desmera]

> On 2010-06-14, at 9:59 AM, Dave M. wrote:
>
>> I'm going a little off-topic, but flow control is definitely something
>> that would be nice to add. Do you know if anyone has checked to see
>> if the optical sensor in a mouse is able to see the ABS filament as it
>> leaves the toothed pulley?

If not, you can always have the optical sensor watching a pattern etched or printed on the side of the idler wheel. That'd be pretty accurate.

- Revar

[Zach Smith]

bre is gonna kill me, but if you agree not to blog it:
http://wiki.makerbot.com/spindle-mk1

> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot?hl=en.

[Theron Trowbridge]

How about Twitter?

Thanks for the peek!  Saw these at Maker Faire and thought they were pretty spiffy.


-Theron
^

[Marty McGuire]

With respect to Bre killing you over leaks, it's not as though the
wiki updates are secret.

There is an RSS feed of all wiki changes available here:
http://wiki.makerbot.com/feed/site-changes.xml

It's not super-useful because it doesn't show diffs, but it does show
what pages are being created/changed/etc., including the filament-mk1
page.

Hopefully this is not a problem. :)

Thanks,
Marty

[JohnA.]

The URL has been on the MakerBot flickr for weeks now:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/makerbot

(That's how I got to the wiki page and got the dxf files to make one)

JohnA.

On Jun 14, 8:10 pm, Marty McGuire <schmartiss...@gmail.com> wrote:
> With respect to Bre killing you over leaks, it's not as though the
> wiki updates are secret.
>
> There is an RSS feed of all wiki changes available here:http://wiki.makerbot.com/feed/site-changes.xml
>
> It's not super-useful because it doesn't show diffs, but it does show
> what pages are being created/changed/etc., including the filament-mk1
> page.
>
> Hopefully this is not a problem. :)
>
> Thanks,
> Marty
>
> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 7:25 PM, Theron Trowbridge
>
>
>
> <theron.trowbri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > How about Twitter?
>
> > Thanks for the peek!  Saw these at Maker Faire and thought they were pretty
> > spiffy.
>
> > -Theron
> > ^
>

> > On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Zach Smith <z...@makerbot.com> wrote:
>
> >> bre is gonna kill me, but if you agree not to blog it:
> >>http://wiki.makerbot.com/spindle-mk1
>

[Zach Smith]

I'm just teasing. :)

We're walking an interesting line here at MakerBot: we want to be as
open source as possible and share the cool stuff as it happens, yet we
also want to be able to have a big announcement when something new
comes out to maximize sales in order to survive and repeat the
process. It costs money to pay people to design this stuff (for
example, we are PAYING 5-6 people to develop open source hardware)

Right now the development stuff is an 'open secret'. We do almost all
our dev out in the open and hope that people will wait until we're
done with it to blog about it. Seems to be working. :)

Zach

[Steven Dick]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Zach Smith <za...@makerbot.com> wrote:

We're walking an interesting line here at MakerBot:  we want to be as
open source as possible and share the cool stuff as it happens, yet we
also want to be able to have a big announcement when something new
comes out to maximize sales

Also, you have to drop teasers frequently enough that those holding their breath don't turn blue.  :) 

[Dave M.]

Thanks for the link, Andrew! I need to download your printed socket
so I can see what it looks like / figure out what it's for. I'll
likely send out a board for prototyping, though (assuming I even get
this thing working). I did rip apart one of my old mice last night to
fiddle with it a bit, and it might be good enough for a simple
prototype for what I'm doing.

> > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/makerbot?hl=en.

[Dave M.]

Andrew, one more question -- what do you use for a lens? All of the
parts I've found are non-stock items or have crazy minimum
quantities. I'll look at the datasheet to see if there is information
regarding lenses there -- maybe I can use something different, but I
don't know how critical the lens properties are.

[Andrew Plumb]

I'm not quite there yet, but for a lens assembly experiments I picked up a generic peep hole from the local Home Despot store. Trying to keep things as off-the-shelf as possible.

My own immediate interest is to use the sensor as a non-contact approach to compensating for z-platform wobble. I'm going to try mounting a low-power laser diode either on the z-platform itself or project the beam through the acrylic, directly into the mouse sensor. I'm hoping I don't need any optics for this specific application, but they might be necessary if the wobble is too large for the sensor's unassisted FOV.

In theory, it should then be trivial to read out the shifting point position and dynamically tweak the Y-build platform position accordingly. Best laid intentions of mice and men. ;-)

Here's what the color-coded renderings for the "development" circuit and diff'd socket look like so far. Pin 1 for the ADNS-2610 is at the origin:

[Dave M.]

Very nice! I don't have any experience with these sensors yet, so I
can't comment on your approach, but the idea sounds really great.
It's a bit of a bandaid for fundamentally flawed mechanics (I don't
like the threaded rods!), but hey, if it works that will be great.

Not sure if you've already seen this post before, but this is by far
the best information online for hacking with the ADNS-2610 I have seen
to date: http://bit.ly/cD8t7Q.

>  adns2610_dev_circuit.png
> 134KViewDownload
>
>  adns2610_dev_circuit_inverse.png
> 118KViewDownload

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[Andrew Plumb]

On 2010-06-15, at 10:55 AM, Dave M. wrote:
> Very nice! I don't have any experience with these sensors yet, so I
> can't comment on your approach, but the idea sounds really great.
> It's a bit of a bandaid for fundamentally flawed mechanics (I don't
> like the threaded rods!), but hey, if it works that will be great.

It's more about mechanics-independent, closed-loop feedback than a bandaid per se. Crappy off-the-shelf threaded rod with a $2 sensor to track relative z-platform position should be able to tighten up performance nicely. Toss in a second downward-facing $2 sensor to the bottom of the Y platform (aka standard optical mouse configuration) to watch relative and absolute build-platform position (laser-etched, printed or hand-stenciled patterns) and you're even further ahead.

> Not sure if you've already seen this post before, but this is by far
> the best information online for hacking with the ADNS-2610 I have seen
> to date: http://bit.ly/cD8t7Q.

Hadn't seen that one. Thanks for the link!

> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/makerbot?hl=en.

[Dave M.]

I certainly see your point. :) I'm sure you'll keep us posted on
your blog!

I went to the store today to pick up a few mice to open up. I don't
want to keep this thread off topic so I'll just post info on my maker
blog when I make progress.