MakiBox $200 Complete 3D Printer

greenman100 Wrote:
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> This isn't quite true. Apples and oranges
> comparing a 0.35mm nozzle to a 1.75 or 3.0mm
> nozzle.

And comparing pellet-fed and filament-fed systems.

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I'm not sure why the extruder needs custom machined rollers. It's not the rollers that shape the filament. They would help maintain consistent tension on the filament coming out of the nozzle and insure it cools straight without bends, but I get within .05mm letting it pile on the floor. I'm going to build Lyman's spooler to go with my extruder, using rollers made from latex tubing filled with hex nuts.

Does the design rotate the threaded rods for movement along x,y,z axis?

That is the functionality I am designing for the 3d printer I am building.
To give resolution at 1/1000 of an inch. Each gear tooth movement would be around 1/1000 of an inch.
Or 20 threads per inch using a 50 teeth gear for moving to a position.

Then if the nut is snug enough to the threaded rod, it would be quite simple to get some pretty good resolution.

The design I am doing also has optical position detection with gears, to also report back exact positioning.

I think it is better then belts.

What I am curious about, is if it is using rotating rod, is the snugness of the nut that moves as the rod turns an issue with precision?


Bob Eastwood
Robert Eastwood

Robert Eastwood Wrote:
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> What I am curious about, is if it is using
> rotating rod, is the snugness of the nut that
> moves as the rod turns an issue with precision?

It is. Start reading up about backlash, machine screws, leadscrews, ball screws.

Robert Eastwood Wrote:
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> What I am curious about, is if it is using
> rotating rod, is the snugness of the nut that
> moves as the rod turns an issue with precision?

+1 on greenman100's comment - not only is the snugness of the nut a problem, it's THE problem. I'd speculate that over 10,000 man hours of time have been spent on how to minimize that problem in the most economical manner (or perhaps over a million; these estimates of man effort are always pretty loosey goosey).

Fundamentally, every connection where a part meets another part, to rotate or translate it, has a small gap between the parts. When changing direction, the drive must reverse directions and displace (rotate, for a stepper motor) through the sum of all these gaps before any motion will occur at the working end of the system. This used to be a real problem on trains - there was some play in every coupling, and with a train at speed, if the engineer had to make an emergency stop, hitting the breaks from the engine, all these gaps would go from tension to compression very quickly, and a shock wave would travel down the train, getting bigger with each car (because each car adds a little more gap). For a long train, when this shock hit the caboose it was strong enough to produce sudden accelerations that could be fatal to anyone in the caboose. (Nowadays, each car has brakes on the wheels, so this problem is vastly smaller.)

When machining, for best accuracy, when the tool is off the work, the machinist will back up to past the point they want to dial up, and then approach it from the same direction every time, to reduce backlash errors in the measuring apparatus and gearing. Better quality machines have smaller errors.

Belts not only suffer from this phenomena, but they also have a stress/strain relationship of the belt to worry about. It's small, but not non-zero. Fortunately, in a 3d printer, the only loads on the belt are the inertia of the print head and friction, so over a few moments, any effects of this will disappear. But if you made a CNC milling machine with belts, every time you pushed on the work, the belt would stretch/compress and change your measured position a little bit.

Ramble over.

Regards,
aeronaut

billyzelsnack Wrote:
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> bobc Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I read somewhere that Makibox will open source
> the
> > design files, if so I expect the OS community
> will
> > get in there and make some useful tweaks.
> Makibox
> > had a successful crowdfund without a working
> > prototype, which is not bad going.
>
> They said they'd release it once they hit 1000
> orders. They announced a number pretty close
> recently and there has been a lot of press in the
> last few days.

Sales of $200,000 is a lot of reward for a bit of hype and marketing.
My guess is there will be 1000 unhappy owners soon, being "hyped" to buy their next generation - "which is much better now because we've learned from the Alpha units", at a small loyalty discount. This looks so much like one of those brainstormed "grab the cash and bail" stories in the forming...
Anybody heard any happy customer reviews yet?

Tekwizard Wrote:
> Anybody heard any happy customer reviews yet?

To my knowledge, they have not shipped a single printer yet.

greenman100 Wrote:
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> Tekwizard Wrote:
> > Anybody heard any happy customer reviews yet?
>
> To my knowledge, they have not shipped a single
> printer yet.


I don't think they will get any happy customer reviews to be honest, the printer is fundamentally flawed in so many ways,and so far the quality of the prints don't look overly great,

the question you've really got to ask when looking at these thing is what kind of hadware would you get in a 3d printer for $200 when you can barely buy a decent control board and stepper motors for that and they still have to make a profit out of it, how much support would you get for it?

these kickstartr campaigns really are total bs it's just another group selling a yet another barely developed printer for nothing more than making a dollar out of people who don't know any better,

i'd suggest a better kickstartr campaign would be one to raise money to improve slic3r or one of the many host programs we use and abuse everyday at least the money would get to the hands of the developers whose hard work these cash grabs exploit

Their print quality is getting better. They are using a printrboard, the BOM for that is around $30.

Never really understand why people are so down on these startups. The objections mainly seem to be "NIH". You have to give people some credit for realising that if they buy a Mini, they are not getting a Rolls-Royce, and there is always a risk buying *any* product that it might not work as well as hoped, and new products always have teething problems. Also, there are some pretty smart engineers out there apart from the people who work on Reprap projects

Pity really, if Reprap people spent a bit more time sticking their head over the parapet they might find there is a lot of useful stuff going on out there, instead of endlessly rehashing Mendel etc. Reprap development is pretty stagnant.

the main problem is that it's a commercial project barely out of the bushes of development that uses the "opensource" label to sell printers, there is no available source to any of it and seriously doubt we'll see any, even then it's not structurally sound there is no rigidity in the x y platform, as only one side of each axis is supported

bobc Wrote:
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> Reprap development is pretty stagnant.

I concur. The last reprap development that caught my interest was the Rostock. Since then, nothing new seems revolutionary or out of the box to me. This Makibot is no exception. However, if the developers manage to sell a $200 printer and profit enough to expand their company, it would be a significant development in the aspect of making 3d printers more available to the masses.

Although I have no interest, I wish them success.

Bobc wrote:

Pity really, if Reprap people spent a bit more time sticking their head over the parapet they might find there is a lot of useful stuff going on out there, instead of endlessly rehashing Mendel etc. Reprap development is pretty stagnant

I have to agree here, one of the issues is that there is an inbuilt assumption that everyone wants the same thing from their printer, another is that RepRap seems scared of challenge (otherwise I think we would be a lot stronger in powder printing rather than an obsession with fused filament). However I did see an interesting idea in the area of special resistors that didn't generate heat in one thread .......

I'm not going to speak to the quality of the MakiBox. I have never used one.

@Dark Alchemist: There is no odd reason. Reprap is a project about plrinting with plastic first and foremost. These other methods you mentioned are not being "researched". They have been around about as long as FDM. The method used with the Rearap may not produce the highest resolution, but it does produce the most durable parts (laser sintering excluded, of course).

If you look at the print times of something like a Z-Corp resin, or powder based printer, you will see that the build rates are very similar, and in some cases, FDM is faster.

@Logrod: Ahem... You are all Reprap people. The very fact that you are here, either asking or answering, makes you a Reprap developer. It is the conversations here that spark inovation. If you notice in the root forum, there are forum categories listed by research topic. This is where it's all happening.

You cannot expect to see a new machine coming out every month. It takes quite a bit of time for new ideas to filter their way down to a real machine, and then gain enough visibility, so that everyone starts using it. Teardrop holes,

Look at the idea of printing on glass, for example. Before I started advocating for printing on bare glass, many long-time reprap developers had all but given up on it. Even Joeseph Prusa was not convinced that it could work without PET or Kapton on the surface. Now we have at least four camps, all pulling for their idea. Bare glass (any), Kapton or PET tape on surface, PVA glue and water solution, and sanded glass.

@akenvim: Rostock is a brand new baby! It has not been out all that long. What you may not realize is that there was a huge effort by some of the firmware developers to get support built in for this printer in a very short time. Just because you don't see something happening here on the forums, in front of every body, does not mean there is no progress being made.

The fact that there is such great software base like Repetier, Pronterface, Skeinforge, Slic3r, and all the rest attest to the fact that there are some very dedicated individuals in this community. To claim that development is stagnant is a slap in the face to that.

@thejollygrimreaper: We get what we pay for, don't we?

To understand why so many claim open-source status, you have to jump in their shoes. See, the thinking goes like this:

"Hmm, I'm going to go after all these people that want to build repraps, and they all want open source, so I'll just say I'm open source, and include the open source electronics, hot end, extruder, software, etc..."

Then it sinks in:

"Wait, if I make the design open source, what's to stop some other guy from copying my design, and selling clones of my printer? Can't do that! I have too much time and money invested to do THAT!!!"

After that, it's just a downward spiral of guilt and denial. I imagine there is a bit of this going on at MakerBot right now.

I can speak to this because I have my own design, and it is not open source. Not yet, any way. Not because I don't like open source, but because this is the initial development, and not really a collaboration. I take it to the Maker Faires, and I show it there, but I'm not exactly going out of my way to sell them just yet.

I don't advertise it here because it is not fair to this community, and I would not want to burden the folks here with having to pick up the slack for poor design, no documentation, and non-existant support. We get enough of this from RepRap puppy mill vendors. Am I right?

Instead, I chug along quietly, and I observe what people complain most about, and if I find that thing in my design, I fix it, run up the credit card, and keep going. Along the way, I pick up a few stray souls, and help them with their RepRap builds. I don't mean just answering questions here. I call these people up, spend hours and days walking them through every little detail of their build, printing them new parts, and building up my support muscles.

Well, can a FDM build bearing, a spanner, a bicycle, all at once that are all functional? No. Powder can and they are being researched and I suggest you go to youtube to see the BBC story on the race to build a Bicycle (all but the rubber for the tires) all in powder. **Spoiler Alert** They managed it and it ran with the person riding it in the parking lot. Was the first one they made so not a strong as they wanted but being a prototype that was a majoe jump.

So, they are researching it.

Will RepRap be for the home consumer market? No really as it just can't print fast enough nor can it print smooth enough without resorting to acid vapor baths and 3000 to 5000 grit sanding. Too much work for the average home consumer but lets not forget RepRap is just a Rapid POTOTYPING system and really was never ever meant for the home market and as ugly as the prints are (just a fact with FDM) it will never be a huge hit when a comparable powder system would be available.

Right now 3d printing is a fad but unless something majorly changes it will never massively succeed due to the limitation of FDM as the average consumer wants it now (as in 15 seconds now which is unachievable by any printing process) and they want it to come out as smooth and glossy like a injection/blow molded piece does now.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

I disagree this is a fad. This is the beginning of a new age. Technology increases in complexity at light speed. In just a few years time we will have electronics so blazingly fast and able, that if reprap continues to evolve we will be able to do some really really amazing stuff. If it's not the reprap project it will be others, open source or not. In the end it would be nice to keep pace and matching capability of expensive closed source 3d manufacturing units, kind of how various distros of Linux have kept pace with Microslotht.
As to reprap being self replicating. As an outsider just coming into this world, I see the reprap more as a stepping stone, a device that can be used to make custom parts for better machines, and the cycle continues. This is where the strength of reprap lies. Perhaps the idea of being as "self-replicating" as possible needs to be re-thunk. We already have a strong line of units focusing on minimal parts and ease of build and materials sourcing. That end of the project should be used as a basis for the next steps. This still would allow newcomers to look up the basic prusa for example and get into this world.
That said, further development of the "simple" units should be transformed into more capable machines. Equipment that can keep the project competing. We do have development and ideas out there, but it would be great if there was more interest in making these ideas come to life. Of course we don't have unlimited funds, or we could all just pay someone to design us more open source equipment. But I refer you back to my opening paragraph, electronics in the affordable-to-everyone range are getting incredibly fast and capable.
There should be a few schools of reprap, one continuing with FDM printing and more stable machines like Mendelmax or Nopheads Mendel90, and others looking into printing UV polymers or powders. I mean in all reality, inkjet technology is dated, it cannot be that hard to manufacture (or reuse) a printing head that is really only a few dollars of materials. Slap on a bright UV light, make some changes to a firmware and fork off slic3r with some additions specific to the task...

For me this project is about Open Source CNC/Manufacturing equipment. The end. I know there are other goals here, and that's cool, but Open Source manufacturing is where the strengths of this project lie, and where the future should be.

-Dave

xclusive585 Wrote:
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>... but Open Source manufacturing is where the strengths of
> this project lie, and where the future should be.
>
> -Dave

See, you confirmed what I was saying. For the consumer they don't really care where it comes from as long as it looks nice, something FDM is not able to do, right out of the shoot AND needs to be done in 15 mins or less for what takes us 9 hours to do right now.

For the people who are in it right now there is a separate goal from what the mass consumer has and for this to be anything but a fad the mass consumer must latch onto something and like it enough to keep using it and frankly I just don't see that happening with FDM for many reasons.

As I said FDM is about prototyping rapidly but people forget that the rapid is not meaning how long it takes to print the rapid is in how long it takes to get an idea and have it in your hands then make a change and get the next in your hands. Prior to FDM you would have to use molds and it would take days to weeks to get the mold back from the shop to try your changes.

So, I will assert that for the people in the business it looks like a winner but to an average consumer it is a fad. Something new, a toy because when it is all said and done what will they use it for after their initial few jobs? The average consumer is not going to make models so they will buy them, or download them via w/e method, and print it. Cool enough but take Yoda printed at .1mm height and take an injection molded Yoda and you tell me which is shinier and just looks better? Remember the average consumer is like Homer Simpson where they like shiny things with lots of lights over anything else even if the anything else is more practical.

"As to reprap being self replicating. As an outsider just coming into this world, I see the reprap more as a stepping stone, a device that can be used to make custom parts for better machines, and the cycle continues. This is where the strength of reprap lies. Perhaps the idea of being as "self-replicating" as possible needs to be re-thunk."

I disagree because I know we are closer to achieving our self replication than ever before but decades away as well. Lets face it if we could print out the metal parts for another reprap would you really trust them over something that was forged? Would you trust a motor that was layered out to one that we have now? I know I wouldn't. As far as the electronics parts goes I can see this moving into a situation, at some distant future point, where it will not only print the circuit board but print the traces and the components on the board all in one swoop, or at least the discrete components.

As far as re-thunk the originator of RepRap, Adrian Bowyer, made that premise as goal number one so it will not get re-thunk.

"That said, further development of the "simple" units should be transformed into more capable machines. Equipment that can keep the project competing. We do have development and ideas out there, but it would be great if there was more interest in making these ideas come to life."

As much as you like opensource there just isn't enough motivation as the motivation of getting dirty filthy stinking rich. Show a person a million dollars or tell the person that they will help humanity and see which the majority would go for.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

As much as I do or don't like Open source is not the issue here. Open source works, GNU proves that. There is nothing you can do with a Windows PC that you cannot do with Linux (besides OS specific wares of course). Reprap if it continues on its goals and development, can be the same counterpart to the big boys on the block as Linux/GNU is to Microsoft.

I would like to correct my earlier statement about abandoning the self-replication idea. We shouldn't get rid of that plan, as a matter of fact that makes sense to be an ultimate goal. If we manage in the future to replicate almost a full Reprap from a Reprap, then that will mean we have crossed the other hurdles I've been referring to.

But

To get to that point, means taking a step away from [our current type of] FDM, and focusing on other types of machines and manufacturing methods. Focus on PCB production, Focus on different print methods, focus on laser cutting, focus on lots of things.
If we spend some years branching out into other types of machines and manufacturing, then in several years we can have a series of machines which can reproduce all parts needed for the whole series of machines. Then we will be able to go a step further and combine technologies as things get smaller cheaper and faster.
Ultimately we will end up full circle and have machines that can truly reproduce themselves and many other things.

This is going to take a lot of years and a lot of work.

I tend to believe that it will happen, the only question is how far behind big business will we be.
This project is already working on any and all of these things, so it's already happening.

I agree with you and I was told about a new Mendel machine that will be a three in one for $3999 American. I was told that by its creator on irc, well, not just me we all were on the channel. He only would say it will have a Mendel, a laser cutter, and CNC with articulating arms for parts placement. There ya go something moving in the right direction.

Now, do not ever get me wrong I am pro Open Source but I am not so blind as to not understand what motivates humans more than anything else on this planet and that is the motivation of money, or basically to get, at least, filthy rich. Being an altruist is not what most humans are and if you see one ask them if what they are doing isn't being taken off of their taxes BECAUSE a true altruist will do something for humanity for the sake of humanity alone and not for any other reason.

Yes, Open Source is such a huggable ideal but humanity is too self abosrbed to embrace it but one day it will out of shear need, or at least I can dream, but for now we need money to live and having four jobs (two for survival and one to make the money needed for research of your OS project and one being your OS project) is just not viable. Maybe after the world economies implode?

So, this idea I am all for Microsoft is BS because I am not. I know Linux (I also know that since Bill Gates left MS they have been in the red and I am hoping with W8 that their phone and tablet fail like Zune did and they can go bye-bye too but probably will get a US bailout instead.) and used it in 1998 until 2008 when I had enough of that scene when all of the other distros started coming out. Frankly I am starting to see a lot of dolts on Linux who couldn't survive in a CLI enviornment if they had to. This is akin to the Microsoft people but this is why Microsoft won that battle because they made the OS so simple a baboon could use it and get stuff done, regardless what that stuff is, without effort. This is what we need in the 3d printer world and if you notice I only see that coming from the closed source for profit 3d printer businesses that I really dislike.

Companies like 3d Cube, Makerbot, et. al. are making their printers easy to use, make good prints, aesthetically pleasing, with an aura of professionalism among them. We have none of that.

So, I ask what does RepRap have to lure in the average consumer? I see abosultely nothing to be honest about it. FDM, by its very nature, can never offer the quality the average consumer demands and I am not sure if it will ever be able to print a Yoda at .05mm layer height in the time it takes you to nuke a buritto because that is what an average consumer demands even if they do not say it outloud because the worse thing to happen is to lure these people into this world and after six months the printer is sitting in the garage gathering dust, cobwebs, and up on Craig's list.

I have seen, and heard, numerous things out of people in the reprap world and none of it seems to be right. Many conflicting statements and statements that are just outright wrong. Here are just two:

1) We do not want the mass consumers getting on board and would rather it stay in our garages like it is now.
2) Open Source is about toiling and having to work to get something done.

Yeah, until you plug those two misconceptions up you aren't going to achieve what it is you wish or at least not in numbers we want.

So, don't kill the messenger as I am only pointing the things as I know them to be from this side of the world that 70% of its economy is based upon people buying stuff needlessly regardless if they really need it or not.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

Printrboard RevD Electronics for $30?? I'm showing it retails for $125-$130, same as SD RAMPS, so it will likely be similar price in bulk....$80 or so. If you knew how to design the parts, insource all the parts from digikey, and hire a team of chinese assembler, then yes you can probably hit $30, but you'll have spent so much time your product will not release on time.

So, what do you think they paid?

I wonder Simba because when I originally saw their price tag the math didn't add up to me either. I now mass quantity discounts and even if they purchased 50k or 100k of all of the parts I just don't see it happening with the parts. Now labor in communist China would help reduce the price but getting a printer from 400-500 down to 200 shipped? I just don't see it but I would love to.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

Dark Alchemist,

Many of your arguments don't hold up. For example:
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"Right now 3d printing is a fad but unless something majorly changes it will never massively succeed due to the limitation of FDM as the average consumer wants it now (as in 15 seconds now which is unachievable by any printing process) and they want it to come out as smooth and glossy like a injection/blow molded piece does now."

If the consumer wants it now, then please explain why Amazon has such success with a business model that has customers ordering things and getting them the next day, or more often, in two days. If I want to print out a recipe, my expectation is that my printer can spew it out in well under a minute. If I want a custom made snowboard from Austria, I'm willing to wait a few weeks for it to arrive.
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"Some odd reason RepRap is stuck on filament for its printing and in the real world they will be left in the dust bin because there is a lot of research going on in the world with powder, and even liquid resin, printing."

I'm not convinced that anyone has a good idea where 3D printing will be in ten or twenty years. For decades, typewriters used ribbons - there were special ones that had half black and half red so you could type in two (two!) different colors. I can imagine your counterpart in the early 1980s arguing that laser printers and inkjet printers would never displace dot matrix printers because printing with powder or liquids is so unstable, no one would ever bring that into their home.

Also, RepRap isn't about filament - it's about 3D printing. If someone builds a head that uses injection (been done) it can be put on a RepRap. If someone builds a head that can solder, and uses their modded RepRap with that head to make circuit boards, great (although there are probably better techniques for doing that in industry). If Prusa or anyone else came out with a new head that used two buckets of liquid polymer resin and hardener connected by hoses to the head, I'm sure people would use and build it, as long as it works, and the better it worked, the more people would use it.

Further, there is no inherent reason why filament printing can't produce great results. Or powder or liquid methods. But for the home enthusiast, the latter two require a sealed base to contain the working substance, while filament printing does not. Further, on an industrial scale, one has to wonder about contamination of liquids and powders while manufacturing, whereas filament is always just as pure and clean as what you buy (although what goes on in the head is another issue). What will happen in the future is that engineering creativity and the market will decide what methods and techniques will win out. Dismissing filaments now implies a degree of knowledge of future developments that no one can have.

Finally, public expectation will be tempered by cost and availability. Everybody wants a car that has the appointments of a Mercedes, drives like a BMW, has the reliability of an Acura, and costs as much as a basic Hyundai. Doesn't exist, of course, but all of these companies, and many more, are profitable and build cars with specific feature sets that sell and make money. People would love a smooth injection molded surface, but if they need to spend $12,000 to get a printer that can do that, or can spend $500 to get a print that has little terrace lines on it, they may well learn to live with the lines.
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"Another issue with RepRap is the very basis of RepRap itself in that it was supposed to become self replicating but I am seeing more and more designs of Mendel deviating from this and using more and more metal and metal plating."

The goal of the RepRap was to build functional machines. If some of the parts are printed, so much the better. But until we can print stepper motors, wires, and all the parts of the print head including the hot end, insulator, laser, etc., any machine is going to be limited. Further, the ideal of making a machine that can replicate itself is only really important if you want to put the machine in a spaceship and send it to some distant world where it could make mining robots, processing robots, and copies of itself. We're decades, and probably centuries, from the point where that's an issue. What I want, now, is a machine that can make useful products now. Artists want to make art, makers want to make parts for their other machines, manufacturers want to make prototypes and perhaps useful items to sell, etc. Making it self replicating is a noble ideal, but is still far from state of the art. 3D printers are closer to that reality than many other machines; mills and lathes can make some of the parts for themselves, but in reality, one needs a tool suite to make the tools to make a tool suite, and so forth.

And another goal of the RepRap community was to develop knowledge about how to make these machines, so they could become a reality. I have a Ph.D in physics, and I think that, in principle, I could have built a 3d printer from scratch, with no community support or input of outside knowledge. But it would have taken me several years, much frustration and unnecessary expenditures, many broken parts, and an obscene amount of my free time. And I still wouldn't have come up with something as elegant and functional as the Mendel90. Personally, I'd rather not be the one to think of everything - the community has a lot of good ideas, and has solved a lot of problems as a collective, instead of being individuals each out for their own gain. If some people take this knowledge and make a business out of it, power to them - they have to deal with all the hassles of running a business. But the strength of the community is the free and open nature it has. In the same way that Linux has become a free, open source OS that competes effectively with Windows, and has sort of taken over Apple's OSX by proxy from a relative (BSD Unix), the open source community can work in the presence of the free market, and act as an incubator to overcome some massive startup costs in intellectual effort to make the possible an economic reality. And in terms of developing this knowledge, RepRap has been smashingly successful.
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Personally, I'm excited about what 3D printing will bring to the table over the coming years. Will we develop conductive plastics that can replace wires? Will we develop techniques that will allow us to print with aluminum wire filaments? Will people develop geometries and techniques to print light, strong panels that could replace the MDF or Acrylic on the Mendel90, Prusa i3, and other buttressed inverted T platform printers? And how will we manage to use a wider range of materials for printing?

Imagine a printer designed to build a house. It could lay wall materials, wiring and pipes all at once. Just drive the truck with the printer on the bed to the build site, dig a hole, and go. We already use something kinda similar in laying down foundations for houses - workers put in molds, and then a truck with a hose on a long arm "pours" the concrete into the molds, moving the arm around to spread the concrete out. This isn't that far from printing with concrete - we just need to solve a few issues on placement and curing time, and we could print the foundation of a house without molds, and embed the floor piping and electrical in the process.

But there are a ton of problems to solve before this becomes a reality. Inexpensive printed houses would do a lot of good, particularly after natural disasters and in the third world where things as basic as shelter are not a given. And this is just one challenge that faces the 3d printing community. Can RepRap solve this one by itself - nope, but it can certainly contribute, and should be commended for doing so.

So, Dark Alchemist, in concise terms, quit hating on RepRap and start suggesting good ideas.

Regards,
aeronaut

If the consumer wants it now, then please explain why Amazon has such success with a business model that has customers ordering things and getting them the next day, or more often, in two days. If I want to print out a recipe, my expectation is that my printer can spew it out in well under a minute. If I want a custom made snowboard from Austria, I'm willing to wait a few weeks for it to arrive. - Because people get it and in our shops most brick and mortar stores don't carry nearly the inventory of what you can get from Amazon AND you don't have to fight a crowd nor use gas AND you skirt sales tax. It was already proven that internet sales took a slump for Amazon when they started to charge a sales tax everywhere. They rescinded it and went back to only charging a sales tax where they have a physical presence.

I'm not convinced that anyone has a good idea where 3D printing will be in ten or twenty years. - Agreed.

The goal of the RepRap was to build functional machines. If some of the parts are printed, so much the better. But until we can print stepper motors, wires, and all the parts of the print head including the hot end, insulator, laser, etc., any machine is going to be limited. - That is a cop out and you know it, or at least you should. What we have are people straying very far away from the goals of RepRap. More and more metal structures and less and less fabricated parts. I am not the only one who sees this as we had this discussion on the irc a couple of weeks ago and most are saying the goal of Adrian's needs to be removed.

Also, RepRap isn't about filament - it's about 3D printing. - Explain that to Dr. Bowyer because I am not sure he would call a liquid or powder printer, that we have right now mind you, a RepRap.

Further, there is no inherent reason why filament printing can't produce great results. - Want to bet? By its very nature of layering and having to be melted and the way plastic works it will never look like an injection molded part. How the powder and liquid can do it is via extremely high resolution layer height. order of .05 etc...

And another goal of the RepRap community was to develop knowledge about how to make these machines, so they could become a reality. - Agreed and the reason we have MBI, Cube, etc... right now.

Personally, I'm excited about what 3D printing will bring to the table over the coming years. - So am I but not via a filament printer and its inherent short comings.

Will we develop conductive plastics that can replace wires? - I bet so or something that mimics plastic but filament is not the best way in doing it.

Will we develop techniques that will allow us to print with aluminum wire filaments? - I lay odds yes.

Will people develop geometries and techniques to print light, strong panels that could replace the MDF or Acrylic on the Mendel90, Prusa i3, and other buttressed inverted T platform printers? - I was talking about this but if it were to be printed in one piece it would take a larger printer to make smaller versions.

And how will we manage to use a wider range of materials for printing? - Well, I suspect lasers might be something as I have been dancing around with some ideas that instead of a 1920's style electric toaster for a print head how about a 20watt laser focused on the material or a couple of 20W lasers focused on the material for melting it?

Imagine a printer designed to build a house. It could lay wall materials, wiring and pipes all at once. Just drive the truck with the printer on the bed to the build site, dig a hole, and go. - Not within our lifetimes.

Inexpensive printed houses would do a lot of good, particularly after natural disasters and in the third world where things as basic as shelter are not a given. - I 100% agree and even to the Appalachian's which is America's third world.

So, Dark Alchemist, in concise terms, quit hating on RepRap and start suggesting good ideas. - Most of the suggestions you did I already did so we think alike in that respect and as far as hating on RepRap I don't hate reprap but I am not a fanboy over it either. 3d Printing I want it to change the paradigm. Here is what my bio says on Thingiverse so gleam from it whatever you will:

I am just a person who loves 3D and finally I found something that can help the world if even a little. I want this technology to take off so much that it will change the current paradigm. Need something now? Just print it instead of having to drive someplace to buy it or order it through the internet so something else can waste a resource getting it to you. Either way 3D printers can save on pollution and using less gasoline/disel though lets not forget the weird and whacky design that you might want that is so obscure that no production company would ever mass produce it. If you have a 3D printer and/or a CNC then make it yourself.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

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Also, RepRap isn't about filament - it's about 3D printing. - Explain that to Dr. Bowyer because I am not sure he would call a liquid or powder printer, that we have right now mind you, a RepRap.

I think Adrian wouldn't mind having a printer using liquids, as long as the printer is replicable. In fact, Adrian published his work on a printable piezo-nozzle: [reprap.org]

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Further, there is no inherent reason why filament printing can't produce great results. - Want to bet? By its very nature of layering and having to be melted and the way plastic works it will never look like an injection molded part. How the powder and liquid can do it is via extremely high resolution layer height. order of .05 etc...

2D laser printers can, unlike traditional book and newspaper printers, print only dots. These days, the resolution of those dots is fine enough to make the results pretty much indistinguishable from traditional machines.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

... think about LOM-fabbing with layered sheets, contour-cutted with a knife or laser, glued/fused together ...

Around 1992 we laminated complex 3D-parts out of paper from a roll, cutted with a CO2-laser, that were solid like wood and looked even similar.

Maybe ten years ago I've laminated micro-parts from lasercutted 0.1mm thick steel-sheets - here an example: [forums.reprap.org]

Around the same time we ordered micro-components laminated from 'green' ceramic sheets, cutted to shape, fused with ceramic slurry and embedded gold-tracks and vias, that were sintered to massive complex 3D-parts directly usable in microtech-applications.

Actually there is somewhere a comercial LOM-printer, fabbing rigid or elastic 3D-parts from knife-cutted PVC-sheets and a slovent for fusing the sheets to a solid body.

So you can print/fab all sorts of solid parts with accuracies/resolutions defined by the used materials/prefabs and tools ... it's more a matter of ideas, know-how and available tools/materials what's defining the actual limits ...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2013 04:58AM by VDX.

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Traumflug Wrote:
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> 2D laser printers can, unlike traditional book and
> newspaper printers, print only dots. These days,
> the resolution of those dots is fine enough to
> make the results pretty much indistinguishable
> from traditional machines.

That is something I have been wondering about if we will go to this route? I doubt we will see that being done with a filament printer though but using a new technology very possibly. Who is to say we can't use the technology of a bubble jet/ink jet printer with another liquidy like material (like the ink we use in 2d printers now) that has a Z added? Print with dots, like the ink jets/bubble jets do now, and give it depth so it will be extremely hi-resolution, print way faster with more accuracy than we have now, and give us the possibility of true color prints.

What do you think? Think that might happen?

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

... there are several types of bubble- or ink-jet 3D-printers (beside the Z-corp-type 'powder-binders') - they mostly print with wax, as wax is fluid enough when melted, to form single droplets, when forced through an orifice ... and will solidify when cooled down. Here you'll achieve 'blobs' with maybe 30microns diameter and heights until 20 microns (cooling parameters) ... but only the structural strength of wax too ...

Others, with more viscous fluids use other nozzle types ant prints single dots of UV-curable resins (like Objet) - here you'll get blobs of maybe 50microns diameter.

With continuous paste-dispensing you can 'draw' tracks with maybe 0.1mm width ... but some nanotech-guys already managed to draw fluid paths with 20 nanometer width!

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

I am just not into the drawing of lines for printing and I lay odds something that has some structural integrity will come along using the bubble jet like technology.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

... you can print solvents to etch holes and contours in sheets of solid/stable materials and laminate/fuse them to a solid body.

... or you can print with salt on a powder surface and heat the surface with a moving IR-heater rod, so the powder will melt and fuse to the underlyuing surface ... except the parts 'contaminated' with the salt, that won't fuse. This process is known as ILS = Inhibition Layer Sintering in contrast to SLS, where you melts only the object-volumes ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

The first process seems like a modern CNC type of set up and the second one almost sounds like the powder type of printing.

I wonder if there is any closed mouth work on a 3d ink jet printer using a material that has structural integrity to it of at least as much as plastic? I just wonder.

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I await Skynet and my last vision will be of a RepRap self replicating the robots that is destroying the human race.

... Objet prints with UV-cured polymers, that have normal 'plastic' properties, that can be defined between, stiff/rigid and elastic ... and can be coloured too ...

For more stable materials you should search for OLED-printing with solvents ... or actual projects around 'sandwich-ceramics', that were fabbed with nanoscaled flakes of ceramics in a polymer matrix - more stable than steel, but light as plastic ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]