3D Platform

[Mac The Knife]

Has anyone had any experience with this company? They have the one printer, 3DP1000, with a 1000 x 1000 x 500 mm build area. leadscrews instead of belts, and for an additional 2 grand, servo motors. http://3dplatform.com/products-3/equipment-platforms/

[Xenocrates]

Taking a quick look at it, I wouldn't personally want a printer like this, because while it looks nice and compact, it has all three axis's stacked, which means any positioning errors increase greatly. The price seems quite high for what you get as well. Last time I looked at leadscrews/ballscrews, backlash was a minimal issue, and the prices weren't that bad. (Admittedly I got prices from my uncle, who runs Leadscrew Intl) The print surface material wasn't mentioned, and at that size is a major concern. They also don't mention if there is a heat spreader. And those distributed electronics bays make building an enclosure for it hard, as well as needing redesign if you ever want to swap out electronics. At that size, a heated enclosure seems like a necessity. And they recommend 3MM filament. That's wrong in many ways. I would say objectively wrong, however, there might be some benefit to it (I can't think of one really). It melts slower due to a worse area to volume ratio, and thus extrudes slower, requires more extruder precision to extrude small amounts, is bulkier in a bowden tube, and is also less well catered to these days than 1.75MM. They appear to use an E3D nozzle (looking at their nozzle change video)

They also have you adjust your Z height with an allen key to loosen the extruder bracket. Doesn't appear to be a software method.
Other technical gaffes when it comes to an expensive machine like this:
Advises you to season your nozzle with Canola.
No height mapping for the bed. Just bolts to adjust the glass with.
Adjustment of height appears to be limited to 20MM increments via LCD.

They also seem to claim you can't print at 100MM/s with steppers (maybe that's true for leadscrews at the steps/s they limit to, but the max can all day.) They claim to be open source, but I don't see any design downloads (I suspect you have to contact support and be an actual customer to get the source)

I wouldn't buy it. YMMV.

[DavidF]

I think I would slap an extruder on my cnc mill before even considering something like this. Lots of wax, still a turd...

[Eaglezsoar]

I like your answer Xenocrates, and I totally agree with it.

[JFettig]

Can you imagine the wobble that gantry would have?!

That is such a poor gantry design, and the cost!

[Mac The Knife]

I wonder if those servo's would work on my Seig X2? their probably 4-500 bucks apiece.

[626Pilot]

I propose that you instead pay me the $22,000.00. In return for this, you will get:

• Not one, but two bespoke printers with the same work volume (1x1x0.5 meters)
• More rigid frames
• Encoders on the steppers, and custom firmware to read them and do lost-step correction
• Belts instead of lead screws (this isn't a mill for f*** sake)
• Four extruders
• A speedball, two escorts, and two nights at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas (you pay for transport/food/entertainment)

After that, I should still have a good five grand left to myself.

[Mac The Knife]

I had already proposed building it ourselves.