Thanks for the replies. What I should have said was that I was looking into 3d printing machines for a possible future purchase. We currently outsource some parts by sending off IGES files of our SW models.
I just watched a clip about the Makerbot. Anyone have any views on the cheaper end of the market machines?
I have looked into this several times and could never justify it.
At a previous company, we were spending over $35,000 per year on SLAs and it still didn't make sense for us to to it in-house.
A few quick points to think about:
1) You will need to have someone in-house trained to use the machine. It is an art, so it will take a while to get good at it.
2) You will have to maintain stock of all the materials, cleaners, supplies, tools and everything else.
3) You will need to maintain the machine properly. (If you are using it every few days it isn't bad, but if you only use it once a month or less it will probably need serious cleaning every time).
4) If you have a larger run (say 30 parts), your might need to run your machine non-stop for a week. Instead you could outsource it to someone with 4 or 5 machines and they could run them in a day or 2.
5) Whatever machine you pick will be outdated within a few years.
6) A protoyping company will likely have a much better machine than you select. Therefore the quality of the parts you get from a third party will likely be much better.
My recommendation would be to develop a very good relation with a local shop that makes SLA or other prototype parts. If needed, they can easily get you parts the next day. And costs these days really aren't that high.
Obviously without knowing all the details, I can't be for certain, but I don't think it is worth it to invest in your own machine.
But you might make a lot more model iterations in-house thereby improving the design if you don't have to get approval for every outsourced model. I predict within 10 years nearly everyone doing smaller part designs will have one of these in house. You can do all the digital protoyping (virtual)you want - there is nothing like getting something in your hand. A picture might be worth a thousand words, a 3D virtual model worth a hundred thousand, a model can literaly save you millions.
For larger parts that you might think you can scale down - get some experience with outside models first. Actually get some anyhow with any system you are considering. Thin stuff doesn't scale down - it desintigrates if it prints at all.
We use a Dimension Elite at my company, a couple of the concerns that MDMgroup brought up are not really an issue in my experience.
For the training it couldn’t be easier, almost as simple as printing something to a sheet of paper. I was never trained on how to run the machine and had no difficulty figuring it out.
Maintenance wise we use our machine 3-4 times a month and the only cleaning is occasionally vacuuming out the chamber.
As with so many things it depends on your exact needs.
I own a small design company and we invested in a basic Zcorp printer about 4 years ago, primarily as a tool to add value to the services we offer, however we do offer 3D printing on a subcontract basis, but not a huge amount. This is partly due to the fact we don’t employ anyone specifically to do this so our labour rates are higher than companies that do, the actual consumables costs are low.
Most customers seem impressed we offer this and are more than happy to take away their “free gift”. They are a good way of getting a hands on feel for what the part will look like or even offering various options for the same part.
There are some truly amazing machines out there now that can print in glass, clear plastic, various metals, wax etc but they come at a cost. In fact I know parts of Formula 1 cars are now 3D printed, but that is probably taking things to a different level.
In short if you want quick cheap parts and are happy that they are only in powder or ABS plastic a Zcorp or Dimension machine will be useful if you need high quality prints in various materials look to outsource.
You should have no problem finding a reseller that will give you demonstrations of what their machine can do and even offering you to work on your current project.
It all depends on what you're doing, we had a 50k machine at the place I was working at a while ago. I believe it was a dimension brand printer. It would take days to do some of the more intricate parts.
The printer itself had a tolerance of.... oh +/- .005 inches I think, maybe less. The neat part was, you could bolt these parts up to production quality pieces and check interference, or easily and cheaply create mock ups for customers that they could hold in their hands. The printer paid for itself in not a whole lot of time.
What used to cost 2-10k for a plastic model could be made with a little bit of patience and maybe 50-500$ worth of material.
Their price cannot be beat but you can't specify print orientation yet. I had one bad piece where the print orientation was changed from what I downloaded; they reprinted it correctly at no charge.
