Core77

I would say that the advertising is patently false. The PP3DP Up! Mini has a heated build area, smart support material, a comparable build area (4.7" x 4.7" x 4.7"), and the printer itself is fully half the overall size. Granted, it doesn't have the secondary extruder nozzle, though it does have very smart support-material algorithms that make removal of the supports very easy.

I also have serious concerns about the actuation of that articulated arm over typical gantry-style layouts. Not only is it more complex, but inertia is the enemy of extreme accuracy when it comes to 3D printing, and there's a lot more mass being swung around than with the standard extruder block that's on a single-axis slide.

Looks cool, but it really does seem like change for the sake of style more than anything else.

comments?

yeah, what Androo said about the articulated arm. It's great for printing shapes of that concavity and set of radii, but what about straight lines? And furthermore, at full extension, that arm is likely to droop. It would not be as bad/heavy if he took off all of that custom aluminum covering everything.

and what about the fact there are no sample printed objects anywhere!? hello? does this thing even exist?!

A 3-d printer is judged on: the quality of the objects, the print time, the cost of ownership. I don't give a flippity-flip about the delorean style doors. Put the money and resources into making a quality machine.

And I don't care for the advertising copy "Redefining 3d desktop printing..." is 3D desktop printing actually even defined for the first time yet? If so, how different is this from others? Is *this one* defined at all?

"Capturing the fascination of blah blah" surprise: clients don't care if you're fascinated while it's printing. They want the object printed.

You gotta have functionality before you have style!

"Capturing the fascination of blah blah" surprise: clients don't care if you're fascinated while it's printing. They want the object printed."

This statement is true if you're framing it within a commercial context, however, the long term vision is to bring products like this into a residential or non-commercial context. If people purchase durable goods purely on function, then we'd have a bunch of 'machines' housed in opaque boxes - not the case (turntables, lab/scientific auto-pickers, watch casings, engine bonnets, etc.)

... And for student design work, he's killing it. Only a jaded mechanical engineer would disagree. I would suggest he tones down his marketing rhetoric though.

Fun to experiment and see if we daisy chain these with robot assembly machines if we can develop a self sustaining / self replicating robot world......I bet with some time, money and effort we could get a little robot to extract material, process and deliver it....these things manufacture based on need and a library of designs.....robot assembly and distribution. Totally fun and possible experiment...basically like replicating "life". Example, if raw materials were slow to come, the machines would realize it and assemble more material extractors, processors and deliverers...if the system needed improving it would have to produce "designer" machines that could access where improvements were needed, "design" the specs and send them to the 3D printers....code in feedback loops so all the machines talk to each other......facinating possibilities.

From a design point of view(strictly aesthetics), I think he did a great job, very high-quality renderings. As for the engineering side, there could be some issues. First, there is no "prototype" featured anywhere on the website. There's a fullscale model, but that's about as useful as a wooden apple. I think the designer knows enough about 3D printing to realize the need for a soluble support material, but not enough to include a heated build platform. Second, the print cartridges are extremely small for an ABS/PLA plastic printer. Cartridges of that size probably wouldn't hold enough filament to print the object in the demo. Third, the arm. I don't see any issue with the printing arm in terms of sagging, as long as high precision bearings are used. This would be a fragile part of the machine though, so any downward pressure would likely ruin the arm. I assume the silver-colored pieces would be made of plastic so weight would not be a major issue. Robotic arms have been successfully used for 3D printing in the past. I feel as though a printer of this much design consideration should be using a resin/light-based printing system. Plastic filament printing is finicky and required a lot of user intervention.

The mechanical workings of this type of project is more a problem for an engineer rather than a designer. Or at least a designer who has very good mechanical aptitude.

Although, ill admit, it looks quite nice, Stefan probably shouldn't have messed with the gantry style setup you see in almost all CNC equipment, just for the sake of... i don't even know what. Good luck finding the budget to reinvent the CAM software from scratch.

The inertia of the arm (mentioned earlier) is definitely a big problem. You probably cant use $15 stepper motors anymore, you need some kind of heavy, expensive, high torque, impossibly precise geared motor (if the arm was extended to 5" the base motor on the arm would need to consistently be able turn an absurdly small 0.02 degrees to move the arm 0.002"). That wouldn't be great for overall cost, print speeds, and acceleration of the print arm.

The recent explosion in 3d printers is due to the fact that they are now AFFORDABLE. You dont try to hop on to that bandwagon by introducing a FDM printer with a 5x5x5 build envelope that is probably going to be just as expensive as a much more capable entry level SLS machine.