Fast and Furious Printing

[Brian..]

Warning, this is more of a techie post about 3D printing equipment. Move on, robot nerds, nothing to see here. 

 

I was producing yet more Houdini robots for the museum. It's a great way to use up spare printer time but it's a tedious bloody job. It got me thinking about what makes it so boring, particularly if you want to make small runs of robots. 

 

There are two problems. First, it's slow. The body alone will take close to 24 hours and the remaining parts perhaps another 36. I like to print with a very low layer height so my times are longer than most. I solve that problem by running four printers, to the absolute delight of my long suffering wife. Not as bad as a six foot robot in the living room, but close. 

 

Secondly you can't reliably print a large number of pieces at one time. If you try to fill the printer bed with lots of parts then you have to watch it like a hawk. The danger area is the first half hour when the printer lays down the critical first layer. If this has any faults then you can expect failure. Even if you get off to a good start then there are horrors waiting for you. A part breaks loose or it warps. Or the nozzle clogs and everything is ruined. Or you come down in the morning to the infamous plate of spaghetti.

 

 

The spaghetti isn't half as bad as the absolute nightmare of a three inch ball of molten plastic covering the entire printer nozzle. You're looking at hours of work to clean up that mess

 

So I have to print parts individually or in small batches. Pain in the bum. For the Houdini Robot I probably have to run ten print jobs, and even then I can expect the odd failure.

 

The dream solution is a big, reliable printer that can produce detailed prints quickly and at a price that won't break the bank. And it looks as though there may be such a printer about to reach the market. Super fast, very accurate and with built in fault detection. It has a built in camera so you can watch prints remotely and it even has a Lidar scanner that examines the critical first layer to tell you if there are problems. I've calculated that I could probably print an entire Houdini in two passes. Oh, and it can also automatically change filament colour!  

 

It's the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon. Too good to be true? Probably, But I want a challenge so I'm going to give it a go. I do not recommend this for a beginner. You get just as good quality from an Ender at a fraction of the price. This is also a Kickstarter project which means that there's a risk you loose all your money. Hey ho. 

 

Here's a review by a highly regarded 3D printer expert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[robothut]

Trying to take all the fun out of 3d printing with a machine that does not fail. We will see. I am sure the new machine will have its own way of adding some new fun to the process.

 

[Brian..]

At least it should make prototyping considerably faster. When I design I always make some error or other that doesn't show until I assemble the parts. Now I won't have to wait a day to make corrections. 

[Ranger]

Yes Brian but my 6’6” robot isn’t using expensive electricity running 4 printers!  

[Andyman]

This is why I don't get into 3D printing. It's like film photography. You don't know the results until you develop the negatives and print them. I use to enjoy that process when I study it back in college, but now for me it's digital all the way. I want instant results!

[Ranger]

I will stay with using metal!

[robothut]

3d maker noob did a video on the problems with the new Bambu lab printer. Most of the problems are related to software so they should be able to fix those things. But right now, No power loss resume. Super slow Wi-Fi connect speeds, anywhere from 20 minuets to over 1 hour to transfer large files to the printer. SD card large files do not work.. If the filament breaks the machine tells you but you cannot fix the problem with taking it all a part. Well, the list is long. But most of the problems should be fixed in software at some point. 

 

[Brian..]

That's the reason I would not recommend it for new users. It's a big gamble. And this is not the only negative review I've seen, John.

 

I don't rate these reviewers too highly. They are resin printer guys rather than FDM experts. 

 

There are just so many ground breaking features on this machine that I'm not surprised there are problems. Most seem to be connected to the software and to that filament colour change box on top. But to get a Core XY printer at this price I'd have to build it myself and, as you know, that's a big technical job. I could wait for the new Prusa XL but that's twice the price and it looks as though it's going to be much slower than the Bambu. 

 

If this machine works as well as advertised it can out perform all three of my Prusas combined. It would certainly beat the latest Ultimaker for a quarter of the price. 

 

I think I'll stick with it. Famous last words.