Xtra Large 3d printing by ART 3D

Hello every one. We are developing large 3d printers for many materials. Our first model can print up to 1mt x 1mt x 400mmH.
We plan on being active helpful participants of this forum. This is just the first hello.

Here is a 700mm spur gear being printed. :-)

How much elastic catenary droop is there at the center of the build plate?

Have you accounted for the elastic catenary droop with software modifications?

Elastic Catenary:
[en.wikipedia.org]

That is indeed a very large printer. I hope your extruder has a huge nozzle. How fast does the print head travel?

@A2- The bed does not suffer from any measurable droop from edge to center.
It consists of several layers of material to reduce it to a minimum.
If course how we did it is not up for discussion at this time.

@ Dale- We are using a .5 nozzle. We are printing at speeds of up to 300mm/sec and can travel beyond 500mm/sec.
We are still tweaking many things like speeds as we develop our machine.


The only solution we are really wanting is better material to print onto. So called PET tape, that is really a polyester silicone based tape as opposed to Polyethylene terephthalate, is not available in Australia, so we have not yet tried that. We have tried many things and have other very large company's trying to come up with the ultimate solution for people to print onto. Hopefully we will all benefit from it.

Has anyone here tried 3d eez on a heatbed? I would love to hear anyone's suggestions on the subject.

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ART3D
@A2- The bed does not suffer from any measurable droop from edge to center.
It consists of several layers of material to reduce it to a minimum.
If course how we did it is not up for discussion at this time.

Really, why not? This is an open source discussion forum, after all. Seems strange to come along and declare you won't be discussing things.

---

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What is Open Source Hardware?
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@ART3D

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ART3D
@A2- The bed does not suffer from any measurable droop from edge to center.
It consists of several layers of material to reduce it to a minimum.
If course how we did it is not up for discussion at this time.

It's good to learn that you are compensating for the elastic catenary droop, but why the mystery?

There are only a few ways to minimize elastic catenary droop on long suspensions:
1. Bend the guide rails.
2. Compensate with software.
3. Large and stiff, (it will still exhibit elastic catenary droop, but minimal).
4. Path dependent mechanical adjustment.

Is there another way?

Ill keep my eye on this. A larger print volume is exactly what I am looking for

But ill also add, don't keep secrets. Its open source, reprap is all about improving itself and spreading it to the world. O.o

We are here to share a lot about what we are learning. The timing must be right though. As far as our printer being open source, It cost's a lot of money to build our printer. We have full time engineers working long hours on all aspects of our printer to make it every bit as good as the biggest company's best printers. To build our printer one would also need access to very expensive machinery and tooling. At the end of the day our goal is to help bring down the cost's of large printing as well as finding new ways to do so..

The last 24 hours we have been testing a 1mm nozzle with PLA.. Printing on glass sprayed with circuit board protective lacquer spray. That stuff is awesome. So far we a re very happy with what we are getting using the repetier software on our machine. We just printed a 200mm x 60mmH herringbone gear bearing. We are about to do another with the clearances tweaked a little. Last week we where printing some large spur gears (500mm+). So far so good.

If any one would like any help with any aspect of large printing, please pm me and I will try and help.

@ART3D

How are you heating the substrate?
Or are you only able to print with PLA?

I'm looking for a 500 mm x 500 mm heater, do you know of a method to make one?.

Who are you bench marking your printer against?
What is your printers tolerance?

Yes we are heating our bed.
We can print with a lot of different material's, not just thermoplastics.
I would make a 500mm² heater, I would use 4 x 250mm² heaters. That way you could have 4 zones. Labjack have a good solution to control 4 heatbeds via a pc gui.
We are bench marking ours against the fortus 900.
We will be striving to better the quality tolerance and output of the best printers out there. We already have solid plans in place to better the output of 2 fortus 900's put together.

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ART3D
We are bench marking ours against the fortus 900.
We will be striving to better the quality tolerance and output of the best printers out there.
We already have solid plans in place to better the output of 2 fortus 900's put together.

Stratasys Ltd. Fortus 900mc
Achievable accuracy:
Parts are produced within an accuracy of ± .09 mm (± .0035 in.) or ± .0015 mm/mm (± .0015 in/in), whichever is greater.
(Accuracy is geometry dependent. Achievable accuracy specification derived from statistical data at 95% dimensional yield.)
[www.stratasys.com]

These are impressive tolerances for a filament fusion welder!

This printer weights a ton, oops 3 tons, lol
2869 kg (6325 lbs.)

@ART3D
Are you going to use encoders to help with the accuracy of your printer?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2013 12:56PM by A2.

Yes,, they're very impressive statistics. I would expect that from them.
So we know it can be done. We know our linear system will cope with the speed and the g forces that are developed with the weight of our carriage and extruder's/tools. So we are confident that we have the mechanical ability. We also know some cheaper printers are really not that far away from that level of accuracy. So we know we can do it with the right electronic system and we do have access to them.
Because we have the ability to improve any aspect of our systems when better solutions become available, we see no reason why we can't challenge the biggest and best out there. We have the experience to compete with the best designs.Our quality control systems are in place based of 30+ years of engineering experience. We have never said no it can't be done. we have always said "Yes, it can be done and we can do it".

I can't say anything about the fortus 900's weight. I have herd it is a very solid machine. Credit where credit's due, I love that machine. I think its awesome. I would love to own any Stratasys printer. Its on the bucket list. As a matter of fact we love a lot about Stratasys. After all, a lot of their machines are being used to teach people about and realise the awesome possibility's that 3d printing can offer to man kind. I have to like that, even though they are my competition.

I thinks its inevitable that we eventually use either encoders or other types of positioning technology's. We have a range of steppers with different encoders in the factory that we are going to investigate further in the new year. We are also going to try new hardware and software combo options in the new year.

Here we are at the end of the year and we have met all of goals we had set out for this year. Our printer prints large 900mm x 900mm models with ABS, PLA and polycarbonate very well (we can print larger than 1000mm x 1000mm in our x & y, we just haven't done so yet). We are still doing test's and they will continue for ever. So far the team is very happy. We are doing things the big boys cant offer already. That makes me and my team very happy. I am very proud of my teams ability and dedication. Thanks team.

We would like all of you to know that we greatly appreciate how much you guys give back to the 3d printing community. Some of you do absolute fantastic work for us all.

At the moment we are using repetier software with marlin and slir3r. We are going to try Repetier firmware in the coming weeks because we are so happy with the program.
We believe in open source and we want to continue to support it. We are looking forward to offering our printer in an open source manor to our customers, so we can help each other develop technology to the customers needs. The fantastic work some of you do will no doubt get us all a lot closer to the accuracy levels we spoke about before. We intend on helping in any way we can.

We would like to thank the awesome team behind Repetier, Slic3r and Marlin for the much appreciated work you do.
We also thank all of the posters on this forum.

How about sharing some actual technical details (since this is a technical subforum) instead of writing what sound like press releases? Keep the chest thumping for your own website.

There is no reason to be like that crispy. I answered the questions that a2 asked. Your post is not exactly encouraging me to post here.

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ART3D
There is no reason to be like that crispy. I answered the questions that a2 asked. Your post is not exactly encouraging me to post here.

He's right, your posts read like PR spam.

---

What is Open Source?
What is Open Source Hardware?
Open Source in a nutshell: the Four Freedoms
CC BY-NC is not an Open Source license

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ART3D
Our printer prints large 900mm x 900mm models with ABS

Sorry but it's impossible without heated chamber.
Post pics of these ABS models please.

We don't have a problem with ABS not sticking. It must be the circuit board protective lacquer spray we spray on the bed. That and our settings.
In the pics you will see some small diameter tubes 350mmH and a large gear. Neither warped or came unstuck until we dropped the temp of the bed. As we do more models that have a large foot print, I will do my best to post them for you.

Art 3d it's a very nice design I am building a similar size but a little lesser than yours what motors are you using in your setup I would guess since the gantry looks heavy probably NEMA23 around 10-15kgcm please do reveal some details if not at once but one by one and hey it's Christmas time so throw couple of secrets for the community

The biggest 32's are on our prototype mate.
It might be the end of year break,, but we can't keep away from our printer and this place. Merry Christmas buddy!



Wow, its so hot in the office with a 40c/104f day outside, I hope we are not infringing on someone's patent.

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ART3D
We don't have a problem with ABS not sticking. It must be the circuit board protective lacquer spray we spray on the bed. That and our settings..

Yes there is absolutly no problem with ABS to heated bed sticking. Beer works 100%.

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ART3D
In the pics you will see some small diameter tubes 350mmH and a large gear. Neither warped or came unstuck until we dropped the temp of the bed.

Sorry it's not correct examples. Tubes diameter is too small. Gear height is too low. The problems begin when you start printing smth like bike helmets - big high solidwall objects with ABS.

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ART3D
As we do more models that have a large foot print,.

????
You said "...Our printer prints large 900mm x 900mm models with ABS, PLA and polycarbonate very well (we can print larger than 1000mm x 1000mm in our x & y, we just haven't done so yet)..."
Now you say you still did not print big models...

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/2014 05:19AM by karabas.

I am in the process of building a large printer myself, I will be using 16mm rounded bar with support, hardened, it will be a prusa i3 kind of frame, but large large

going to use a .8 or .9mm nozzle
i cannot wait to print a large object, the gears you print are awesome art! Id happily hang something like that on my wall..

The other day I paid about $100 per large vase that is made from a resin, printing home decor is awesome

Your linear motion system is very interesting. I imagine that with such long unsupported rails, the problem is more along the lines of matching the droop in the bed with the droop in the rails. It looks like you decided to go with teflon bearing blocks so I would infer that you are not using precision ground bearing rails. I would also guess that with such a large build platform you are using a belt drive or possibly a rack and pinion rather than a leadscrew. What kind of linear motion rails are you using around the perimeter of the machine in conjunction with the drive system? Do you have any problems with binding when making diagonal movements using teflon bearings?

From the comment about not infringing on any patents, I gather that a heated build chamber is under patent? I was unaware but I am not really suprised. Do you a patent number for referance so that I can see exactly what is covered?