Suggestions for 500x500 build area 3D Printer

Hello all,

I have previously looked at the Ormerod and Prussia i3 printers but due to life getting in the way hadn’t got round to buying anything - some ideas for work related stuff is now forcing me to look again at 3D printers but I will need to be able to print 19inch rack pieces so a minimum of 500m bed is needed which rules out my previous ideas.

Z height isn’t hugely important to me, but the ability to create a flat surface that is distortion free is.

I have found the Creality CR10S5 which on paper does everything I need and for me would come in under £500 as I would get the VAT back.

Firstly is it any good? Initially I need something that will pretty much work from the get go - I can upgrade, adapt and improve as I go but I need to within a couple of weeks have something reliably printing.

We aren’t talking amazing tolerances either, as anyone who has ever used 19inch racks will know.

If the Creality isn’t the right tool then I am open to suggestions, ideally something available in the uk so I don’t have import delays.

Many thanks in advance.

Paul

I would be surprised if it is possible to produce a good-quality printer with a 500x500mm bed for £500. To get accurate height control in a printer of that size, the general advice is to use cast aluminium tool plate for the bed, a bed moving in the Z direction (typically supported and driven by 3 leadscrews), and a very rigid gantry. The architecture would typically be CoreXY.

I have no experience of Creality printers. The CR10S5 appears to have a bed moving in the Y direction with a PCB bed heater. My concern would be that a bed of that sort is unlikely to be flat.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

I agree with dc42.

A 500mm printer needs to be twice as accurate in level as a 250mm printer. Printing time would be in the region of days rather than hours. You would probably need a large diameter nozzle to compensate for the inaccuracy of the mechanism. That would also reduce printing time a bit, but limit your ability to do fine detail. And printer cost will be more like exponential than linear.

Given you don't care too much about height, how about rotate the whole thing 90 degrees and go for a hang-printer design?

Distortion free is also an issue, with shrinkage over large areas likely to be a problem, as is warping due to the shrinkage and adhesion problems due to inaccuracies in bed level.

Accurate, cheap, big. Pick two.

My printer has a 220mm by 275mm heated bed, and I have pieces that I use with a 19" server rack. Face blanks and patch panels are made in 3 sections screwed together. A 19" monitor bracket was made in 4 pieces to hold the corners of the display. It would have been nice to make things in one monolithic piece, but it's not a big enough advantage to me.

An adapter to rack mount a few other pieces ended up having an aluminum bar as a support anyway, so the printed pieces were screwed onto the bar in order to be adequately rigid.

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MBot3D Printer
MakerBot clone Kit from Amazon
Added heated bed.

Leadscrew self-built printer (in progress)
Duet Wifi, Precision Piezo parts

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Paulgwat
Z height isn’t hugely important to me, but the ability to create a flat surface that is distortion free is.

I think this is where you're going to struggle most. Big and flat usually means expensive too, doubly so when you want it to stay flat when heated.

Unfortunately I don't think what you're after exists at your budget so you may need to scale back the size or scale up the budget.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2018 04:44PM by Forum-Layman.

It seems like you already found the most reasonable solution on the market, from Creality. Of course there is the DIY route, but you would need to get a silicone heating pad powered by mains voltage and mount it below an aluminium plate, and clip glass above that. And then build the rest of the printer scaled up to fit it. It all depends on how involved you want to get and how much you are willing to learn. Due to your time and budget requirements, it sounds like Creality's offering is what is most prudent. It has many upgrade options as well, so just think of it as a baseline.

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jefbed
but you would need to get a silicone heating pad powered by mains voltage and mount it below an aluminium plate, and clip glass above that.

Out of curiosity, why do you need the aluminium plate? Why not mount the heating pad directly to the glass? Would you expect the glass to deform significantly under its own weight?

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frankvdh

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jefbed
but you would need to get a silicone heating pad powered by mains voltage and mount it below an aluminium plate, and clip glass above that.

Out of curiosity, why do you need the aluminium plate? Why not mount the heating pad directly to the glass? Would you expect the glass to deform significantly under its own weight?

Three disadvantages of mounting the heater directly to the glass:

1. You will get uneven heating of the glass. An aluminium plate will spread the heat around.

2. You will only have one bed that you can print on. Whereas if you clip a glass plate to the top, you can have multiple glass plates. This has several advantages, for example you can swap plates as soon as a print has finished and start another print, and you can have different surfaces on different plates.

3. You will have to use expensive borosilicate glass instead of cheap float glass.

Another possibility is to put PEI or another print surface directly on the aluminium plate.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Is there a reason you need a 3d printer? It sounds to me like it could also be a job for a cheap cnc router. You can buy poly carbonate flat stock, aluminium or other materials. If you just need something flat with holes and pockets machined then cnc is the way to go, and would be a lot quicker compared to 3d printing a large volume/flat thing. 3d printers would typically take 10 hours and a cnc could do it subtractively in under an hour depending on the type of job. Ie a slab of 450x450x10mm could take 30 hours of printing. Machining 30 holes and 5 pockets could take just one hour.

The parts for my 3d printer took about 3 hours to be machined out of 6mm aluminium plate. If I had to print them would've taken days. And the warping would mean a bad 3d printer in construction.

Machining is much noisier and messy though. And you have to clean up edges from the cuts that are made. The cost of software also needs to be calculated, although you can probably do everything you need with fusion 360.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2018 03:11AM by imqqmi.

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Kind regards
Imqqmi

NFAN CoreXY printer:
[reprap.org]

I agree with what imqqmi says - you might be better off with a CNC router or even a laser cutter.

You can clean up sharp edges on a CNC pretty easily with a chamfer mill.