Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
I would like to see a Aluminatus user forum where I could follow some of this development and pics. I am interested in seeing a 300mm by 300mm ABS print without warp come off this printer.
26 2013-01-22 15:16:14 (edited by nickythegreek 2013-01-22 15:43:26)
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
ezmobius wrote:
Why would having a mendelmax in my warehouse have any barring on this conversation? Do you realize that trinitylabs employed Mike Payson since last april and sold the official mendelmax 1.5+ kits(over 350 of them) all spring summer and fall? I have probably 20 or so odd mendelmaxes laying around. I contrinuted the Linear slide rail X and Y axis to the mendelmax project as my own original design, I also have an ultimaker, a few prusa's, a cartesio, various repstraps, a bunch of aluminatus, a kossell a rostock, 5 or 6 prototype printers without yet any names an orca and probably 8 others I have forgotten by now.
What does that tell you about the Aluminatus now? Nothing ... Get back to me with photos of your $300 i3 and show me the print quality and then I will take you seriously, for now you seem content on trolling without actually knowing the facts.
The mendelmax you saw in the backroom is in fact the "MendelMaxPro" that was featured in make magazine's ultimade guide to 3d printing, go have a peek at the magazine and then have another look at the black mendelmax-pro in the video and you will find they are one in the same.
Look I was just trying to share some technical details with you and the rest of the blokes in here seem civil but if you truly think you can build a mendelmax for $300 or even an i3 for $300 and come anywhere near competing with one of my Aluminatus printers on speed and print quality I will pay you $10k on the spot. But we both have to be in the same room and build our bots at the same time and document your $300 BOM and compare final print quality.
That should motivate anyone who can actually pull off what they claim to do so. So I will be waiting for the call. Let me know when your $300 printer *of any type* can rival the speed and print quality of mine and the offer stands for you. But I don't expect to hear from you anytime soon to be honest ;P
Appologies to the other forum dwellers here who seem very nice and interested in improving the 3d printer technology and quality landscape. But if I had a nickel for everyone who claimed they can build a $300 mendelmax or i3 and take me on print quality but never came though or took me up on the offer well, i dont want that many nickels.
I find it incredibly ironic that the folks who have never seen a multistart high speed antilash leadscrew let alone a printer using them for all axis seem to be the foremost experts on their capabilities. And almost unanimously have decided without ever seeing one in action that it can't possibly be any better then what they cling to currently.
So unless you can truly back up your $300 claim, like I can back up every fact I stated in my posts then why bother posting nonsense about $300 rival printers? Show me the printer you made for $300 and its output and impress me instead of the other way around. I didn;t come here to sell my printer in fact, just to spread some hard earned research about improving the status quouo. I have as many Aluminatus sold as I can make right now so I am not after new customers I am actually only after sharing open source hardware design discussion and improvements but the $300 better then you printer folks of the world are holding the movement back by trying to build precision linear motion cartesian robots from duct tape and dog turds. If tape and turdsa are your thing then enjoy. I prefer to push the enveloipe and see what else is out there that smells less
Appologies if this was ranty, but you know you deserved it
Make sure you have an informed opinion before you declare it the one true opinion next time.
You do realize the i3 is just a mendelm90 clone too right?
-Ezra
...woah.
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
If you spent a lot of time and money trying to make the best, fastest printer you can and then someone says "eh, that's still no better than a $500 kit printer" it's bound to push your buttons. If it can make high quality prints 3-4 times faster, then it is a worthy improvement. Having that 10 hour print come in at 2-3 hours instead is worth spending a premium, especially if you are doing production or a lot of iteration.
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
IanJohnson wrote:
If you spent a lot of time and money trying to make the best, fastest printer you can and then someone says "eh, that's still no better than a $500 kit printer" it's bound to push your buttons. If it can make high quality prints 3-4 times faster, then it is a worthy improvement. Having that 10 hour print come in at 2-3 hours instead is worth spending a premium, especially if you are doing production or a lot of iteration.
Agreed... always have someone saying I can do it better, faster and cheaper. Doesn't mean they can unless, as you say, they put their money where their mouth is.
Keep at it Ezra. I look forward to more information on your machine as I'm always interested in new innovation.
I'm looking at building a MendelMax frame as it seems to be the easiest and fastest built for a machine, but I don't expect it to come cheap. But with a frame I have the basis for a larger machine. I like the SD2 for the fact that it was cheap and relatively well built, but I'd always pictured it as a stepping stone into a larger world. I'm not a tinkerer by nature, I'm a consumer, but this machine has made me learn how it works so that I can keep it running and learn the basic principles of the tech.
I don't expect to get into the electronics (like Ian or Lawsy), or the hardware (like the types of axes that make it work), but if I can incorporate even the briefest knowledge into a new machine of my own creation, then I'm a step ahead.
My hat's off to you, Ezra, for being the creative type to expand the knowledge base of how to make things better. After all, that's what we all do: Make things, right?
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
IanJohnson wrote:
If you spent a lot of time and money trying to make the best, fastest printer you can and then someone says "eh, that's still no better than a $500 kit printer" it's bound to push your buttons. If it can make high quality prints 3-4 times faster, then it is a worthy improvement. Having that 10 hour print come in at 2-3 hours instead is worth spending a premium, especially if you are doing production or a lot of iteration.
Quality with speed is definitely important and worth the extra cost.
How much further can FDM tech really be pushed? Is this the future of 3D printing?
SD2 with E3D, SD Press, Form 1+
Filastruder
NYLON (taulman): http://www.soliforum.com/topic/466/nylon/
Filastruder
NYLON (taulman): http://www.soliforum.com/topic/466/nylon/
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
FDM wasn't the future of industrial printing, and I don't think it will be the "printer in every home" printer. I don't really think any printer will. Even my paper printer is rarely used, even for photos. I go to the drug store for those because they are cheap and better than my own efforts. 3D printers aren't for everybody, they are for people who make stuff. Some people who don't make stuff will start because the possibilities offered by a 3D printer can unlock latent creativity and spur ideas of what can be made.
I see it as something like the table saw of this century. There isn't one in every home, but they are widespread. Just because you cut a bunch of wood and glued/nailed it together doesn't usually mean your project is done. Some things can be considered finished coming out of the printer, but until something like Objet's state of the art multimaterial machines become home-affordable, the dream of a Replicator isn't really going to come true. In the meantime it is one tool in the shop. My father's garage had a table saw, planer, router, workbench, bandsaw, etc. My equivalent would be 3D printer (maybe one FDM and one Resin), CNC mill and Laser Cutter. FDM won't ever be the whole shop by itself, which is what the current excessive hype says a 3D printer should be.
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
I want to apologize first off, it was late last night when I made that rude post which is not my true persoality so first and foremost my appologies to jefferysanders as my behavoir in that post was uncalled for and out of character. You have every right to be skeptical Jeffery and i take back anything hurtful in that post. I would erase it and should not have hit post last night with hindsight and all but I will leave it be for posterity and as a reminder to myself not to let anyone under my skin.
My only excuse is lack of sleep and satress here. This printer has taken damn close to a full year to design implement and bring to market at a scale and price where I can sell it for anywhere as low as $2k at all. The longest part of that year was building relations and partnerships with my manufacturing partners PBC Linear and Thomsin Linear who I want to thank. Without them this would not be possible as I can't make these actuators myself(yet 
So chalk it up to lack of sleep and bad judgement but I should be the bigger man and let posts like that slide off my back like water on a duck. There is always going to be resistance to new tech when old tech seemingly still works just fine and even amazingly well.
I also want it clear that I am not in any way bagging on the mendelmax or i3 or mendel90. All 3 of these rinters *did* heavily inspire parts of the design of the Aluminatus, especially the Mendelmax as I am intimately familiar with every tiny aspect of that printer and it is still my favorite printer I have owned until I designed my own here
So sorry Jeffery, uncalled for attacks are not like me and all I can say is I'm sorry. It won't happen again in this or other forums from me anyway.
I am slammed here working on getting 55 printers all in the mail this week right now but I will try to come back and post more friendly information
Again I appologize for the out of character attack, uncalled for and lack of sleep plus soooo much personal time and effort put into this printer that comparing it to a $300 rinter of any type was a bit hurtfull but i usually have way thicker skin then that
But I sold 350+ mendelmax-1.5+ printer kits this summer and let me tell you right now there is no way in hell you can build a mendelmax for $300 that is complete and anywhere near a quality printer. And if you really can do it for that much please call me because I will fund you to make them if its true
Cheers and Appologues for Now.
-Ezra
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
Hi Ezra. Thanks for chiming in with your technology and knowledge. I am also interested in improving quality.
I'm curious, why is it that you need leadscrews on the x/y? GT2 belts are advertised as zero stretch, so where is repeatability suffering? Or do you use lead screws mainly to avoid having to futz around with belt tension etc? I can imagine that belts will have some stretch given enough force. However, assuming I have ideal acceleration/jerk settings, I should be able to avoid putting anywhere near enough force on the belts to cause a problem. Indeed, the print photos you posted do not look substantially better than the prints that come from my MendelMax. They very well may be, but it's so difficult to tell these things from photos. I'm curious if you'd be interested in sending me a sample print from your Illuminatus such that I can directly compare. For reference, I've attached a few photos of my own prints.
You'll noticed that I stayed away from talking about speed as I'm sure your beefier Illuminatus would have better results at top speed. I'm mainly interested in understanding output quality variations that result from different mechanical choices (i.e. belts vs leadscrews).
I am also very interested in extruder performance. I find that when it comes to printing in high quality, repeatability isn't my largest problem. Extruder performance is. The smaller the layer height, the larger the extruder error factors in (ooze, filament consistency, etc). Do you have anything to contribute in this area?
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
nickythegreek wrote:
I would like to see a Aluminatus user forum where I could follow some of this development and pics. I am interested in seeing a 300mm by 300mm ABS print without warp come off this printer.
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?from … ylabs-talk
This is our google group where we discuss things so this is closer to the forum your asking for. Feel free to lurk or join in.
Ezra
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
When I go there, I see a list of topics, but nothing is clickable, and none of the message content is accessible.
ezmobius wrote:
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?from … ylabs-talk
This is our google group where we discuss things so this is closer to the forum your asking for. Feel free to lurk or join in.
Ezra
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
ez posted a mobile formated link, here is the desktop site url:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgr … ylabs-talk
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
Thanks! Is mobile format really useless, or am I clueless?
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
could be your browser, it works in my Chrome but I prefer the desktop site anyhow.
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
DePartedPrinter wrote:
IanJohnson wrote:If you spent a lot of time and money trying to make the best, fastest printer you can and then someone says "eh, that's still no better than a $500 kit printer" it's bound to push your buttons. If it can make high quality prints 3-4 times faster, then it is a worthy improvement. Having that 10 hour print come in at 2-3 hours instead is worth spending a premium, especially if you are doing production or a lot of iteration.
Quality with speed is definitely important and worth the extra cost.
How much further can FDM tech really be pushed? Is this the future of 3D printing?
Hello forum folk.
Just my two cents. I am relatively new to the 3d printer scene. However I would think that one of the next new bastions for the cutting edge of the 3D printer technology worth more investment in is the filament itself. I know that there are a few startups doing just this but it seems logical as the envelope is seemingly constantly being pushed from the hardware/software standpoint with many of the issues, invariably, resulting from the material itself.
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
Totally agreed! ^^
- www.absplastic.eu - 3D Printing Hub
Re: Robo 3D vs Solidoodle 3 vs Aluminatus
Man this seems awesome was wondering about using makerslide maybe to design a printer frame sorta like the shapeoko (cnc Mill) but with a leadscrew instead of pulleys. Then you could get something pretty awesome if you wanted to build it yourself. Obviously no heated bed but it would be a blast for PLA. Sorta combining ezras design with the shapeoko look and then adding v wheels with a lead screw to get awesome repeatability. Obviously this would be a huge project and would probably take you a couple 100 hours but i think it would be fun along the way. Maybe you could even find a way to switch between 3-D printer and milling machine. Man does'nt that sound fun.