Industrial 3D printer designed & made in NZ
-
This is a duet wifi controlled machine.
A ground up design, you can see more on our Instagram. (But still not showing much due to IP)
The ABS print pictured below is 500mm wide, printed at 0.25mm layer height with a 0.4mm nozzle. (See nozzle top left of picture) Parts come out very flat, much better than our current off-the-shelf heated chamber machines.
It seemed a bit crazy at the time to design and make our own machines but, this machine produces parts a level up on what we currently do and a lot faster.Have found Duet Wifi a great platform to work with, we are using external drives via the extension header.
-
Nice ABS prints!
What's the chamber temperature?
And is the bed heated? When yes, is it as high as the chamber temperature is? -
@nz_andy thanks for sharing, looking forward to adding you guys to the list of Duet controlled machines!
-
A short video showing this machine running.
-
@nz_andy Very fast! But what is the brief pause before the travel move? Retraction?
-
Hi Christoph, that is retraction, so some tweaking to do.
It is the accuracy at speed that is important don't you think, many printers can run fast but start to round out corners etc, especially when you have a big printer like this, 520x520x600 build heated chamber.
We are printing 470mm long ABS parts that shrink 2mm on cool-down and end up with 0.2mm end to end accuracy.This printer uses lead screws, this would seem a bit crazy to some people, Our gantry and print head are very light, custom machined and titanium 3D printed print head. We have not spared expense as this is our workhorse. Our V2 printer is nearly finished now.
Answering your earlier questions, we do have heated bed, but it was not turned on for this print. Chamber at 85degC with vacuum bed on PEI.
-
A few pictures of some big prints we did last year on this machine, these are ABS:
-
Very impressive!
-
@nz_andy wow! How many parts is that top one made up of and any idea what it weighs?
-
That big print was about 18KG or 40lb, it was about 12 parts, we could have done it in 6 parts but it was more economic to break it up more. The finish is a bead blast before painting.
-
A few pictures of our V2 machine. the printer is about 6.5ft tall.
It has heated filament chamber and auto filament change over.
Heated bed is 1kw, chamber is 5kw
-
It's a beast! Thanks for sharing.
-
Impressive! .... are there any projections on retail price (afraid to ask but what the hell)
-
Thanks for the encouragement. At this point we are just making machines for our own use and need more to keep up with our printing work.
We have had a few people ask lately and maybe we should consider selling these because of the amount of time that has gone into the design. At a guess it would be about 80K USD for one of these. -
@nz_andy said in Industrial 3D printer designed & made in NZ:
Thanks for the encouragement. At this point we are just making machines for our own use and need more to keep up with our printing work.
We have had a few people ask lately and maybe we should consider selling these because of the amount of time that has gone into the design. At a guess it would be about 80K USD for one of these.Wow great job. Those parts came out great.
-
@nz_andy said in Industrial 3D printer designed & made in NZ:
Thanks for the encouragement. At a guess it would be about 80K USD for one of these.
Gasp .... but yeah, that is what I was afraid of.
-
Could you give a bit more details on the vacuum PEI print bed ?
Are you just using vacuum to hold the PEI to the aluminum bed or have you figured out a way to have the vacuum assist in holding down the part somehow?
Even if the vacuum is just holding down the PEI sheet it's a rather interesting concept since I have experienced curling of PEI when you get into more than about 90 to 100 degrees for the bed temperature. I would imagine this also helps tremendously in terms of pulling out the just finished print (with the PEI) to let it cool while using a new sheet of PEI for the next print.
A very interesting concept !
Titanium 3D printed printhead ..... oh man ..... I am lost for words ! -
@jens55 The vacuum bed works great. Have not had any issues even at 220deg C. There is literally tones of force holding it down.
Yes works great for part removal. I normally don't even wait for it to cool down, just peel it off.
The door is power actuated so we can automate later. -
here is some 100% polycarbonate coming off a 145degC platform (125C chamber), dead flat , love the sound of this stuff.
https://youtu.be/C7J8eOxjqNY
We are using polycarbonate parts in-place of metal in suitable applications we build automated machines and this get used as a material of choice now. -
@nz_andy 80k is reasonable and in the ball park with a Stratasys 400 or 3Dxtech Gearbox, actually about 20k less for yours. Agree that leadscrews/ballscrews are the way to go especially on larger volumes. Theres a pretty good sized Open Builds machine and a few others with lead or ball screws that produces really nice prints
