Euro_Dancer

Building 3D Printers Yt:

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

First draft of new motor towers for the Dancer MK1, switching to live Idlers and Nema 23s. I am hopeful that these provide cleaner printing than the nema 23s!

[Greg Koenig @gak_pdx]

I work for a machine tool distributor. I've been like a bull in a china shop since they hired me over getting videos, pricing on the website, etc. As a sales guy, I did OK enough that my opinion carried some weight, and now I get to have the sort of healthy, pound-the-table debates with folks running things (it's fun! still shocked they haven't fired me).

While my side of the debate is very obviously pushing for more information, there are some challenges that one runs into.

1- Pricing is, thanks to currency and tariffs and various other factors, much more dynamic than people think. Like right now, I have 7 identical machines in-stock, with 3 wildly different costs behind each of them due to fluctuations in global pricing. We have a list price that is calculated on the worst case scenario, but when you call me for a quote, I'll manually discount based on the cheapest machine available - and I am going to be up front and tell you the deal (I'm not putting on pressure to drive a sale, but I am going to tell you the inventory situation and that once this 1 machine that has $7k of lower costs behind it is gone, it is gone and this quote won't be valid).

2- I can't speak for other sales guys, but my mission is that we only sell you a Speedio if it is going to be an exceptional performer for you. The marginal profit from a single machine sale is absolutely not worth a failed project where we sold a machine that did not absolutely blast the ROI calculations driving its purchase. You call me curious about a machine, and I want to see your parts, and do a full analysis to make sure we are going to crush them. A few kilobucks in profit is absolutely not worth a situation where a customer buys the wrong machine from us, loses their shirt, and goes on thinking/telling the world that the Speedio sucks and it a POS machine. It isn't... but if you buy one to do work outside of its capability envelope, you'll have that opinion.

3- 30% of the time, I tell people to buy something else, and do so happily. My very first sales call ever, the guy needed to mill a 3" tall wall to class A consumer look standards, in big volume. I told him "Nope." We can mill a 3" tall wall, but BT30 rigidity is stretched thin at that point - fine if you have a few parts to make, but not at the 1k/mo he needed to do. He thanked me for being so upfront. Bought 4 machines from us a few months later for a different part and is absolutely crushing it. You lost that sort of consideration if you just sell on the website, though, you also lose that consideration if your sales guys are only thinking about hitting this month's numbers and not the long-term growth of the platform.

4- These are complex items, with many many options, and each project often has many ways to skin the cat. Part of what a really good, technical sales team does (I would say most of the job actually) is education. I think every sale we've done to a new customer, what the customer called us looking for winds up being very different from what they wind up buying. Especially in machining, people get trapped in bubbles with the kind of work they do. The thing a good technical sales staff brings to the table is that we're jumping in and out of bubbles all day long and can connect things we learned from one bubble to another because we have this great overview of the industry.

Simply chucking the product on the website gains a whole lot, but there are some serious deficiencies that are actually really hard to solve. It is also true that the number of technically oriented sales staff, with a mission for long-term growth and not quarterly numbers, is exceedingly small (and probably shrinking). How we can replicate the impact of folks like that while also going digital is actually a very hard challenge, but one sellers of complex capital equipment will need to figure out ASAP.

[Greg Koenig @gak_pdx]

This is a bad argument that ignores some things:

1- Running 100+ 3D printers is a nightmare compared to a single machine, of basically any type. Like wrangling cats.

2- The quality of the 3D printed part is, frankly, junk compared to an injection molded part. Never mind the material selection, quality variance, dimensional control. Just look at the surface finish on these - total junk.

3- A 50T injection molding machine can be had new for about $80k, and we're talking a really nice one like a Boy or Sodik or Engle or Arburg. Used? $15k for one that is basically new, $5k if you want a project. 100 Bambu printers costs more. Takes up more floor space. Probably even needs more power.

4- Our problem is mold sourcing, which we suck at. I could bang out an aluminum mold for this part in my home shop - it is a basic 3 axis mill job, under $500 in material... but we have no infrastructure to make simple aluminum molds in the 100T part class quickly/cheaply. All the effort here is going into high-end, 3D printed, cooled, yada yada molds because that is where all the investors are seeing the money at - bring the high-end back from China. Dustin's parts for the Smart Scrubber are so easy, and I have some qualms about how he went about it, but part of what I suspect he ran into was that all the USA vendors want to make F35 parts and charge F35 prices - dead simple shit is basically a non-starter in the USA.

What we need is the McDonalds of injection molding in the USA. The brains/money are who are in this space are focused on the high-end while totally ignoring the low-end. Lots of people re-industrializing need simple parts, from proper materials, in large quantity. Limits would be:
- Parts that fit in a 100T machine
- No undercuts/inserts/thread pulls (to start)
- Limited selection of materials - tpu, nylon, glass filled nylon, abs, polycarbonate. Any color you want as long as it is black.
- Aluminum molds (running in modular bases) only.
In exchange, we could go from validated CAD file with auto quote to mold in 3 business days for <$5k. Parts flowing off of machines in 4.

Just back of the napkin math for this:
Dustin's Knob

NRE/Tooling 4-up Knob Mold, 6061, Turnaround from final CAD model in 3 Days:
= $5,000

10,000 Unit Knob Run, 5% glass filled Nylon 6. 2 hours of setup, ~24 hours of runtime. Assumes aluminum mold life of 12k shots in this material (fiber fill is abrasive), so amortizing the mold wear into the per-part cost, profit margin to keep the business running:
= $0.48 per part.

10k Parts, From CAD to Shipped in 5 days:
$9,800

[BIGTREETECH @BigTreeTech]

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

BIGTREETECH supports legal and responsible printing but enforcement of the law carries as much responsibility as abiding by it. Detection and blocking of shapes in a slicer or printer firmware is a process that, by definition, will be fraught with false positives and has the potential to impede progress in the education, engineering and manufacturing sectors while providing almost no meaningful blocking mechanism to an individual determined to break the law. @David_Tobin (Exec Producer of @joeltelling 3D Printing Nerd ) will be at an event tomorrow to explain the limitations of the proposed implementation of AB2047 in California. Follow along with him and others as they reason on the subject and catch up with their latest videos here:

https://t.co/sfzL3uc203

https://t.co/xxMkIMMYQg

https://t.co/EPSirDwbZB

Let's keep 3D Printing open and full of innovation and brilliance.

#Bigtreetech #3dprinting #makers

[QIDI Tech @QIDI_3dprinter]

🥳🥳QIDI Filament Giveaway!

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To enter:
👍Like this post & follow @QIDI_3dprinter
💬Comment your best printing tip for materials beyond PLA/PETG
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#QIDI #3DPrinting #Giveaway

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

@QIDI_3dprinter For high performance materials, to fully take advantage of their properties, lower you max volumetric flow! Hotends being highflow, doesn't mean they need to print highflow. Slow the flow to get the best layer/line bonding! #QIDIHighPerformance #QIDIEngineering

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

@QIDI_3dprinter For high performance materials, to fully take advantage of their properties, lower you max volumetric flow! Hotends being highflow, doesn't mean they need to print highflow. Slow the flow to get the best layer/line bonding! #QIDIHighPerformance #QIDIEngineering

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

Tried out a 64D TPU today, printed a couple tests on my Qidi Plus 4, and am well impressed. As easy to print as a PET-G, feels like Nylon (does not really feel flexible), perfect layer adhesion. I reacon this will be my go to 'tough' filament going forward

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

@anycubic3dprint I would use the Kobra 4 combo to prototype parts for my current custom HT printer build. I would use the ACE to help cut down on my filament wastage, and fully use up and switch between almost empty spools. (I have a bad habit of throwing away almost empty spools lol)

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

quality is also looking good, acceptable level of vfas

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

For such a big machine this thing sure does move pretty quick😎 I really out to print some bigger stuff though, 90% of the prints so far can fit on just 1 of the 4 plates🫤

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

Oh, and all kinematics will ofc be outside of the hot chamber. The Thermally isolated hot/cold regions concept from the Dancer MK1 will be used here, though with bellows instead of brush seals.

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

XY kinematics so far. Biggest lesson learnt from my Last build is when you have two independent belt loops driving a single axis, they get out of sync/ skew the axis quick, particularly if your stiffness is not there 1/?

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

This will ofc not be great for accels/speeds, but those are not a priority in this build. Main priority will be quality/dimensional accuracy of prints.

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

@Xaraphim I am starting a HT build now that could make good use of your mosquito magnum is still available😉Will be documenting the process on here and youtube

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

Hotend would be a liquid Mosquito, extruder a milled sherpa (steel if I can convince my boss to let me use one of the mills at work). Obviously still early stage planning so this could change, particularly in regards to the beacon probe, will have to run some tests for that...

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

For my HT build, I'd like to try and make a beacon work. Plan is to add a thin layer of ceramic paper to the underside(protect from bed heat) and then create a housing mounted ontop that a 'cpap' style hose feeds into from outside the chamber to keep the beacon temp low

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

Just uploaded a video on Stepper motor voltage and its effects on surface quality :)
https://t.co/ijnbImDEUs

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

the horrible noise is thanks to the toolhead I was trying at the time, mistakes were made....the current head is much quieter lol

[Euro_Dancer @will_is_ragged]

Figured that this 600mm tall stealthburner I printed a few months ago as a test print makes a cool wall decoration