Quotecpus7% increase in revenue for Makerbot since q4 2013, I think thats what the article is saying.Oh, now I get what you're saying. The thing is, revenue isn't the same as profit. They were projecting over 40% growth in revenue for that time period in their reports to their stockholders... Meaning they were spending money in accordance with those projections. That is, if they honestly belieby Feign - General
QuotecpusI wouldn't exactly call a 7% increase the downfall of a company...Yeah, I should have put quotation marks and an eyeroll emote next to "downfall". Though I haven't been paying all that much attention, are you saying they bounced back to a 7% increase later, or that they are at a net 7% increase since buying Makerbot?by Feign - General
The "spirit of the Makers movement" is different things to different people... For some it's "innovation for its own sake", for others "small business opportunity", and for others it's "free stuff". Now granted, for the free stuff segment, it's from idealism rather than neediness (dreaming of a world without money and such). In any case, what it boils down to is some people believe profit to bby Feign - General
I think the fall has finished leveling out. But man, an immediate 25% loss is an ugly thing when you put it on a graph. Let's all avoid gloating over Makerbot's downfall and hope that they see what it is that suddenly caused their "goodwill value" to evaporate the way it did and that they work to correct it.by Feign - General
Paucus, I've been looking at Kikai labs and also at a company called Spectrom, which seems to have the same basic concept, and are very close to market with it. As for mixing materials, a company called Mosaic Manufacturing is also getting ready to bring a splicing machine they call SEEM to market which can splice materials with different properties, though it's not what you could really call "fby Feign - Developers
It should be noted that Nicholas will likely be too busy for Simpson development for a while (if you wanted a clue as to why, his latest project was a crib), so someone else will have to step up to the plate to make BOB Simpson a reality if it ever will be. Personally, I'm interested in conductive filament for making printed actuators. So far both ProtoPasta and Functionalize are each set to reby Feign - General
Really the only thing that excites me about printing PET is making filament from recycled soda bottles. Finding out that there are multiple different kinds with very different printing characteristics makes me a little wary, since they all have the same recycling code. Is there any reliable way to figure out just what kind of bottle is made of what kind of PET?by Feign - General
Quote691175002To put the problem in perspective, reaching a maximum speed of 2000mm/s from rest during a linear movement of 50mm requires an acceleration of 80,000mm/s^2. It is very difficult to properly convey just how large that number really is. In terms of G-forces, it's about 8.15G, or roughly 1G less than a rocket bound for the ISS. Not impossible, but not reasonable. As for extrusion, tby Feign - Developers
Interesting experiment: Put a round pan on a motor so that it is spinning with it's axis perfectly vertical, turn it on and slowly pour in water, the surface of the water, once it calms down will form a perfect parabola. Even if the force at the edge of the pan is 1G, the angle of the water at that point won't be vertical, but 45o from horizontal (makes it easy to find the focal point, by the wby Feign - Powder Printing and Selective Laser Sintering
Though this place is about making rather than buying, the people here tend to have very well-informed opinions on the 3D printing world in general, making it a pretty good place to ask this kind of question. Back to the subject though, I've not heard a bad thing about Printrbot, and the Simple Metal is about as solid a printer as you will find in the price range.by Feign - General
I might get beaten up here for suggesting a non-Reprap, but the Printrbot Simple Metal is pre-assembled for $599. There is still a little bit of a learning curve (as there is with every 3D printer), but it's less, considering I consistently hear good things about Printrbot's customer service. The only real downside to the Simple Metal is that it has a 6"x6"x6" build volume, which is smaller thaby Feign - General
That actually does sound intriguing. There have been problems with past polar printer attempts with the firmware being unable to handle the math right at the center of the print area, post-processing the g-code into a polar format (Or making a polar-coordinate slicer from the ground up) before it ever goes to the firmware seems like the right way to get around those old problems.by Feign - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
QuoteEcho MooBut we have conductive ABS filament, the surface resistivity of which is 103~105 Ω."Conductive" being a relative term... That is roughly the same surface resistance as freshly cut wood. While more conductive than say, air or glass, nobody has ever gotten terribly excited about making an electric circuit out of wood. There is however the Functionalize conductive PLA filament claimiby Feign - For Sale
VDX, that's a great idea, and probably the best way to get an actual true 3d scan of the sole of the foot in a natural position, but unless you invest in a dedicated scanner, the resolution will still be pretty low. Gyrobot's method got a super-high-resolution scan with exact dimensions, even if it was very limited in scope. Perhaps a combination of methods would be best... A flat-bed scannedby Feign - 3D Scanners, Book Scanners, and Optics
There is a similar kind of printer concept that Nicholas Steward roughed out a while ago. He posted it on Google+ but never really went after making it. Basically, his extends the upper arm of the Sarrus linkages to the lower frame to act as a scissor lift and place the x-axis drives horizontally. A agree though, this turned out quite well even though it was so ambitious.by Feign - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
I just stumbled across this new blog post by Gyrobot, he used a flatbed scanner to scan his feet and took the image produced to make an extremely detailed contour of the sole in OpenSCAD. It seems like this could be used to extrapolate the rest of the dimensions of the foot pretty reliably in most cases. Also, those form-fitting insoles look like they must feel amazing.by Feign - 3D Scanners, Book Scanners, and Optics
Printing with the spool of filament just sitting right on the y-axis, weighing it down and it doesn't seem to bother the thing. A very nice design, are there any plans to release files and a BoM? (sorry if this was answered in the link, I don't speak Spanish at all.)by Feign - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms
It just occurred to me, while Microwaves might be bad for sintering metal, would it be feasable to print water on layers of well-dried nylon powder and then put the whole block in a microwave, melting and fusing the selectively moistened plastic and leaving the dry powder undisturbed? If it works it might be a best-of-both-worlds compromise between SLS and powder-and-binder printers? If dry nylby Feign - MetalicaRap
I'm thinking it gets the amount of filament per color per layer (by mass rather than volume) It looks like maybe it has an option of making a small cooling tower in between each layer to handle the transitions between one filament and the other, from the looks of a few parts. That might be able to handle slight changes in feedrate due to variations in the filament diameter, since those would aveby Feign - General
So not long ago I stumbled across an article about a flashlight printed as one piece using conductive filament (which is already exciting as is) and a machine from Mosaic Manufacturing. I've been looking around and have found almost nothing else about this machine except that Mosaic calls it "SEEM Technology" and is otherwise keeping rather quiet about it for now. I'm rather excited about the iby Feign - General
Major points of note for photogrammetry: Don't let anything be shiny, blow some talcum powder on the model to cover up any reflectivity without losing detail. Not enough to make the whole thing completely white though. Don't move the part in relation to the light sources. This might seem odd, but have some LED lighting on the turntable itself to shine on the model rather than using a fixed spotby Feign - 3D Scanners, Book Scanners, and Optics
Since the Peachy is being discussed here I figured it might be worth it to mention that they've just put a video on youtube highlighting their newest test prints on the latest Peachy revision, (presumably, the one that is going to be mass produced) along with a few painted pieces sent in by the beta testers. Newest Peachy Prints Alas, July seems like it's a long way away.by Feign - General
In general RepRaps have to worry about those outside environmental factors that are outside the designer's control for reliability in a print. I'm thinking that as time goes by, multi-material paste extrusion with various photoresins as the primary plastic will become the next big thing. Both because of the extreme versatility and because it takes out the least-printable parts in current reprapby Feign - General
QuoteTraumflugA printer being functional is pretty essential, isn't it? Seen in that light their ideas might be not as "ingenious" as they appear to be. Having ideas is no challenge, finding working and better ones is.Quite a few of the beta testers have gotten good prints out of their Peachy kits. They're finalizing in on optimizing their production run (example, they thought they would be ableby Feign - General
Quotemartinprice2004There are alternative ways to move the motor off the print head. Gary Hodgson was working on one here. It may overcome the hysteresis problems you could get. Off carriage extruderIs that the same guy as The Shrub over in this thread: ? I was thinking that it was a cool concept, but it hasn't really had much action on it in about three months.by Feign - Mechanics
It seems like I remember seeing the news about this being in development almost a year ago, so it's cool to see that it's finally to the crowdfunding stage. Everything I've read about this printer looks great, taking a lot of practical lessons from the Peachy and putting a rather innovative spin on it with the pressure control system. Also, it looks like it has been refined to the point where iby Feign - Crowdfunding Projects Announcements
I knew that the DoE has a habit of sending my money down the crapper, but I never thought they'd be so literal about it. Headline: "US government spends millions searching for a way to sell its citizens their own feces."by Feign - General
Actually, I'm thinking of a ceramic disk that both the cold and hot ends bolt to which has a hole in the middle for an unthreaded quartz tube. Having the ceramic sandwiched between the hot and cold ends could insulate the cold end even further and give some extra structural support for the quartz.by Feign - General
I don't see the Dremel printer (Actually, made and supported by FlashForge) to be all that odd. While there isn't a whole lot of overlap with Dremel's other products mechanically, there is a lot of overlap with Dremel's user base. Basically, FlashForge wanted a brand partner that could get much needed name recognition with the DIY crowd and preserve the image they wanted. Dremel liked the ideaby Feign - General
To pretty much review: The main problems with the Wally arms are due to a joint (the "shoulder") being between the motor and the driven joint (the "elbow") meaning that changing the angle of the "shoulder" will slightly change the angle of the "elbow" and all other things being static, when the motor changes the "elbow" the angle of the "shoulder" is changed as well, reflecting in a difference iby Feign - Polar Machines, SCARA, Robot Arms