Why are Hangprinters so rare?

I got the question about why Hangprinters are so rare recently, and figured this was a good place to post my response and possibly have a discussion. If HP was a company, the reply below would be in the summary of some internal report. And I would have gray hair.

My reply:
"Getting a HP up and running is currently still a large undertaking. It requires lots of time, knowledge, and space. Those who have such resources have many tempting options for investing them. HP is not easy to find, unless you're among the ca 200k people who follow Tom and related channels closely.

Even for those 200k people, it is not obvious how one creates value with a HP machine. It takes some fantasy and stretch of imagination. I've found that most artists can deliver 10 suggestions in 5 min, but most non-artists can only think of two applications: house printing and kit sales. Printing houses requires enormous investment. HP is also hard to make into a consumer product. This chills many's enthusiasm.

Few HP builders actually achieve successful prints. Most builders still don't get over the calibration threshold. The day some successful HP builder prove to the world that economically sane applications exist, we should expect similar interest as Mendel-sized machines get, minus most of the low-investment hobbyists."

Best regards,

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torbjornludvigsen.com

I agree, it's still a long road to go, but on the other hand I believe in HP's concept as it is very versatile. Due to the required space and steep learning curve it might not be the consumer printer, but more a workhorse for the prosumer or SME's. I see the HP as a hub in small local communities, where users can print products out of recycled plastics. And that's also in my opinion the only economically and environmentally sane option given the amount of waste the HP produces when printing big. Few weeks ago I printed a 50 cm tall statue. Out of interest I calculated that the statue, printed in real life size, would have cost around 500-600e in material. So the only way to go would be to shredder waste plastic and make filament out of it.

Of course that adds an additional layer of complexity to the project, but then again, it would be a strong justification for it in times we have to be aware of plastic pollution.

And about HP creating value, I'm working on a project right now, in which we'll utilize the printer. Expect results in spring, early summer

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2018 02:54AM by atmark.

Yup, we really want pellet extrusion in order to make more economical sense. I'm gearing down and powering up all axes in the v4 to be able to lift heavier tool heads

I'd like to use Precious Plastics Project-style recycling to make Hangprinter environmentally sane. The PPP community is just fantastic, and the documentation is complete and beautiful.

When pellet extrusion and recycling is in place, I think it will feel like a layer of sanity rather than complexity. We should really just do it

Looking forward to see what you're working on! I'll keep an eye out.

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torbjornludvigsen.com

The Precious Plastic project is indeed very good. I was already about to start building the shredder in few weeks, but then I saw a teaser about a new bigger version of it. So, I might wait until they publish it.

Just before Christmas we went to see the plastic extrusion lab at our neighbor campus. The have already plenty of expertise in plastic recycling, which is warmly welcome once we get our own equipment up and running. Their biggest issue though is to get well sorted plastic batches to avoid impurities in their extrusions.

Other than that, I recently placed an order for some Odrives I'll start updating the frame for v4 soon and parallel to that I also start documenting the build from scratch. Probably gonna go with Dozuki.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2019 03:46PM by atmark.