Cheap end of printer scale

[malsalcnc]

I have been looking at printers for a little while now.
As I understand it the top end printers have two types of material.

1) the model or part material

2) the support or fill material. This is dis solvable or breakable to get at the intended part.

The less costly end of the spectrum seem to only have one material. how do they do the support and fill thing?

My boss was looking at buying one of these to see how they worked.

http://us.xyzprinting.com/Product

Regards Malcolm

 

[ajayre]

If you go with one of these: https://reprappro.com/shop/machine-kits/tricolour-mendel/ you can print the part in ABS and the support structure in PLA. The PLA is then dissolved. This will work on any RepRap that has two nozzles.

Or you can print the part in PLA and the support structure in PLA which snaps off. See: http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,359835. This works on any RepRap with a single nozzle - i.e. far more common and cheaper to obtain.

Andy

 

[bigseb]

We bought a FlashForge Creator X which arrived three weeks ago. It has dual extruders and can use ABS, PLA, HIPS, PA, PVA, Laywood, Laybrick and a rubber-like compound (I forget the name). Popular combinations are ABS and HIPS. HIPS dissolves in Linonene so its a perfect support material. On top of that you can quick put together an acetone vapour chamber for your ABS prints to gets that smooth glossy finish.

So far we are very happy with our purchase. The FFCX is basically a clone of the Makerbot Replicator 2. We are using Makerware as slicer instead of the supplied RepG and it works wonders. So far we are using the defaults settings on everything and getting very good results.

One thing to note about the FlashForge printers: everything is opensource so there is a huge amount of modding going on, both in term of hardware and software. Once you go down this path you will be amazed at the results you can get out of a machine that costs a tenth of a Stratasys. This discussion on the FlashForge google group show the results that a properly finetuned FFCX can produce. Pay special attention the posts by user Scott K.

 

[bigseb]

My boss was looking at buying one of these to see how they worked.

http://us.xyzprinting.com/Product

:!: Proprietry filament cartridges... careful, watch the costs! :!:

 

[MikeHenry]

You have to watch out for how much they are selling, too. Looks like XYZ sells in 600-g coils, others are 800 g and possibly 1 kg. You also need to check whether the weight being sold is gross or net. The spools that the filament are packaged on can weigh 200 grams, so a 1 kg gross spool weight only has 800 g of filament.

Mike