3D Printer Builders/Designers

Very interesting and worthwhile idea. I am thinking along similar lines. We bought a Stratasys F170 two years ago to do a big contract. When the contract was completed, we found it impossible to compete with the "Hobby printers". We own and operate 3 Wanhao Duplicator 6 printers and they print much better quality than the 170, sorry to say. The cost of filament is also 1/10th of the Stratasys filament. That is the background. I have since had a very good look at the gantry, which is awesome quality components. We have decided to daisy-chain a separate set of Nema 24 stepper motors to the existing gantry and control the lot with a 32 bit board. I plan on fitting a heated bed which can clip onto the existing build platform. In this way I can operate either the Stratasys or the new system separately from each other. It also means that the build volume can be increased quite a bit. The extruder/ nozzle arrangement can clip onto the existing gantry with quick disconnect plugs. Lots of space in the top cavity for all of the electronics.

Yes, the bigger the better. They retail at $25,000, using 3D printers we have now, we can print and assemble parts for a few thousand, put the money in escrow.

Interesting proposal I must say. I as well have been thinking of a similar approach to 3D printers, because there is a big leap between, commercially available that is, ender 3 type printers and then Stratasys printers. Where Prusa printers are in the middle price wise, but the machine is not really made to last, being mostly 3D printed.

I have the possibility to contribute in both the design aspect and in the prototyping stage with metal parts, I have access to 3 axis mills and routers of industrial design. As well as an "abundance" of Alu 6083, 5083, 5754, 7075 metals. If that would be something of interest that is?

i like the idea of open source, that way, you could use "our" 3D printer with a wide range of software and not be limited with a single brand of filament. I designed these upper enclosure and the bottom cabinet as a unit. The bottom cabinet would have a drawer that would hold the filament in a magazine type of spool holder.

I chose the color Electric Silver because it would not only fit in with any environment but would look similar to other tech products like HP, Apple, Dell etc.

There are 4 primary sizes, from left to right would be a 18x18 for home use or education use, 28x28 for commercial use, 42x28 for heavy commercial or light industrial-rapid prototyping use and 60x28 with dual extruders for industrial use.

I agree with you James. Now I have the opportunity to increase build volume and at the very least make use of what has become a white elephant in the room.

There are different escrow websites on the Internet to hold money, with a joint license agreement that might, though not required, attract stock investors if we go public. With daisy chains or even bicycle hubs (like we did in the 80's when we feared bottle necks and wanted to speed things up) the world becomes your oyster. There is a major shortage of large injection molding machines as I am trying to mass produce acrylic granny houses and bigger. Race needs help with a man-machine daisy chain prototype to better test, trial and error a way to the best design (CAD). I am in Austin, TX. We need permission from webmaster here to recommend best escrow and local volunteer recruiting service.

Hi James, it is so interesting to hear about the different fields in which development is taking place, outside of the mainstream. Most, if not all of it aimed at advancing technology and hopefully reducing running cost. I want to be a part of that development. For this reason I am eager to take a step by step approach to hybridize the F170. My aim is to retain the full Statasys funtionality whilst enhancing its capability further. I hope to get to know the machine well enough to remove some of the built-in Stratasys constraints, like increasing the build volume, since the gantry is the same as the F370. I promised to add some pictures of the F170 gantry system. How should I go about uploading the pictures if it is allowed? Keep up the good work and please enlighten me. What is meant by escrow? Kindly excuse my ignorance.

Escrow, like when you buy a house, just means a third party holds your money until both parties are satisfied with the result. I believe we can come up with a F170 gantry system by manufacturing our own components. I am not a CAD engineer, but a physicist who tries to come up with a unique methodology for everything. I am trying to abandon wood and metal for carbon nanotubes, graphene, and ceramic only. That means the potential for rotating tables with push-pull servo rods and carbon laser for curing, drilling, and cutting. I will add more later. Like you, I worked with remote control planes with servos, radio, and back in the 80's, gas engine. F170's are so big, fast, and high resolution, they would seem like the practical solution for copy-catting, the question is how to get cost low.

What kind of an investment do we need? A plastic only approach with monocrystalline carbon in ceramic, no metal or wood, we save a lot of money, it is stiffer, lighter, conductive/semi-conductive/dielectric, longer lasting.

Well from my own experience this is what yields the best bang for the buck. Roughly at least.

Base structure of machine, metal.

Complex 5+ axis components, appropriate molding material, through injection molding or "cold mold". (Large volume only!)

Less complicated parts, out sourced "standard" parts. Like angle brackets or similar fixtures.

This is with design time, machine time and assembly time, in consideration. But that's just my best guess, based on previous projects and work I've done.

But how would we save a lot of money by not choosing metal? Genuinely curious of your insight here.

Freelance websites (freelancer.com, guru.com, elance.com) all have escrow, like when you buy a house and a third party holds the money until the loan and deed transfer is final. We need an estimate for material cost of large injection molding device, there is place and rental cost, and labor should be all of us who are investors where advertising and sell of blue prints, printers/molders, and products will go to bonded, insured treasury.

Just jumping in here in between, with this article with links to a open source, high temp with heated chamber printer. Also dual nozzle.

https://opensource.com/article/21/3/desktop-3d-printer

Some good documentation and most likely good insights for us, to cut the "trial & error" down a bit.

Awesome, thank you so much for sharing this very useful information. Regards.

I think going with a COTS (consumer off the shelf) approach would be best to get a machine fully operational to approach investors. I was thinking the cabinet/ enclosure could be made locally and relatively inexpensively. As far as the extruder, that can be designed by us. An extruder to allow multiple tip sizes. The drivers can be Siemens, Honeywell, etc. Those are name brands people trust. The stepper motors can be Teknic, TorquePower, etc.

I was hoping to use as much off the shelf parts from reputable vendors as possible, we would just need to design around those parts with only designing a few proprietary parts like heated bed, extruder, filament spool magazine etc.