Engadget Experiences the Solidoodle 3 3D Printer 70
Engadget reports that former MakerBot employee Sam Cervantes has brought to market — or at least to Engadget headquarters in prototype form — a working, cheap(ish) 3D printer from his own company Solidoodle. Originally, the new Solidoodle 3 printer was announced at $500; the price has crept up to $800, but that still sounds like a bargain in the world of home fabrication. Unlike the current MakerBot, it has no built-in card slot, so a computer connection is required for the length of a build.
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Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.
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Looks great to me, though I have Adblock and NoScripts (on Chrome) on by default for every site I visit, unless that site has proven to me that I can disable them. Endgadget is a single column article with pictures interspersed, on a clean white background.
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Yup, sounds like your usual solid waste slang. Yes, it uses an extruder in the "printing" process but would I really want customers to remember it like that!?
I'll eventually get some sort of 3d printer in any case though. At some point I'd want to print out swag witches and staves and stuff to go with my ever-longer attempts to make a game. The experience (and money, and government regulations) would be fun.
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If you want the experience.. I had great fun building a Mendel90, a Reprap type printer. I recommend it :) Makerbot used to be seen as a good source of printers too, until their EULA rewrite on Thingiverse painted the whole company "ugly" in the eyes of the open source community. There's a few other commercial Reprap knockoffs you could look into, best to just ask around on #reprap on freenode IRC
Re:That.... (Score:4, Interesting)
That... Is the stupidest name for a company/product i've heard in a long long time.
If you object to stupid-but-cute names, why are you on "Slashdot?" B-)
(I'd have a four-digit, or maybe even a three-digit, i.d. if I'd been able to figure out the URL when first told about the site over the phone.)
As for "solidoodle" I think the name is great. Mnemonic, descriptive, easy to pronounce, and not TOO hard to get the spelling right. Google search for "solid doodle" (without quotes) spelling-corrects it to solidoodle and finds the company site and discussions about it, too.
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Not stupid but too long. The most succesfull new companies or products tend to be have names that are short visually or when pronounced:
Facebook or even just FB
Twitter
Google
iPhone
Android
XBox
PS3/PSP
YouTube
YouTube is a stupid, grammatically incorrect name. But it the internal vowel "rhyme" between "you" and "tube" gives it more impact than "YourTube".
I'd prefer something vsually more creative for the name of a 3D printer though. How about "3Doodle" with the logo resembling something l33tish like 3D00DL3, or a
ABS solid doodles are STRONG. (Score:5, Informative)
Saw a makerbot being demonstrated with black ABS plastic at a conference last month. The parts made with it were STRONG. (Replacement components of the print head had been manufactured this way.) Also a sample was being made with internal, hollow, completely enclosed and sealed, honeycomb cells, which made it very light without substantially reducing its strength or dimensional tolerances. Should be ideal for things you need to float. (Try building THAT without a 3-D printer: You'd need to bond two or more pieces together.)
I understand one of the problems with the makerbot that metal-frame follow-ons like this are trying to address is that the wooden frame flexes and changes size with relative humidity, making tolerances lower than they could be with a metal frame.
Does anyone know how well ABS works for lost-"wax"-casting originals? Or same question regarding other "hot-glue plastic wires" that could be fed through these machines?
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I have a printed owl figurine about 10 cm tall, with hexagonal 10% infill. It is really light, sturdy enough that it won't break without taking a hammer to it, and dimensional tolerances vary a bit with FDM machines anyway. Given that all axes use stepper motors, the tolerances are predictable enough between prints if you use the same settings.
The 0.1 mm mentioned on the article is nothing special, by the way. With Slic3r you can go down to 0.01 and someone has done that... but a hollow model took a full da
Re:ABS solid doodles are STRONG. (Score:4, Interesting)
The general process that includes lost-wax casting is called investment casting, and while it can be done with ABS, it requires the mold to be baked off in a kiln capable of much higher temperatures than with wax. Burning ABS at home probably isn't a good idea either. I'm not sure about how other materials would work.
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It's been done, but I'm having trouble finding links.
I know I've seen this on Thingiverse. I believe I've also seen people make negative molds on a Makerbot, use that to make a was positive, then
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Any printer that uses G-code can use Slic3r to slice up meshes for it. Slic3r has a number of different infill patterns, and I'll admit the honeycomb one is the neatest by far. It does slow the print down a bit compared to rectilinear though, but it's good if you want quality rather than speed.
People have built Repraps that can do the same thing for $300. The lowest one was $250 or so, I think. Of course, they require self-sourcing and a bit of skill with various tools like soldering irons, screwdrivers and
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When building a honeycomb structure, is it possible to close over an air gap without building up a structure beneath? i.e. how do you put a lid on over an empty space?
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Same way you put a roof on a house, i.e. start from the middle and work outwards.
Lost ABS casting (Score:2)
Check out this guys information on Lost ABS casting [thingiverse.com]. Very interesting!
Casting tricks (Score:3)
ABS has an impressive material strength, but if you're planning on casting, you shoul
Makergear M2 is *NOT* Open Source (Score:2)
Like Makerbot, they went closed source for their latest printer - the M2 that you're touting.
I have an M2, and it's a great printer, but there's nothing Open Source about it, sadly. Well, except for the fact that Makergear looks to the community for help with support and such.
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Flaky technology solving wrong problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with these ABS extruders is not building the frame. The problem is not building a 3-axis positioning system. The problem is that you're welding a hot thing to a cold thing. That's always going to be a marginal operation. Without a better welding process (I've suggested aiming a small laser at the weld point) this will continue to be a flaky technology. I've seen about five versions of this technology in action, and they all sort-of work, but don't yield consistently strong parts.
The ultraviolet stereolithography technology yields much better part quality, but still costs too much. Formlabs [formlabs.com] may succeed in getting the cost down to $3500 or so. They're demoing at CES.
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Formlabs is being sued right now over that printer. I believe 3d systems has the relevant patents.
Actually, it is a fine example. (Score:3)
Article 1, Section 8: ..."To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
You'll note the intent is to create an exclusive right. It is obvious that during the period of that right, the inventor has control, which in turn encourages invention. It is also obvious that should party B attempt to use party A's invention during this period without in turn securing that right from the inven
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I agree with you as far as hardware goes. Patents are a good way to encourage invention and development of this type. It's in the software realm that patents are destroying innovation. Patents were never meant to cover software, copyright should be used there. The silliness in the software patent business does far more damage than good.
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I'd like to see software covered under copyright as well; the kind of thing where you can't copy my binary or my source code, but you're perfectly free to write your own code that does something similar or the same. But that's because I'm a small operation, and I don't have to justify X dollars of investment.
Unfortunately, just like hardware, companies put a lot of money into developing things, and they're looking for some protection for that investment. Copyright doesn't really cut it; and I think that's w
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Two people can have the same idea and make the same things, but only the one with the money and the lawyer can do anything with it.
That doesn't sound like a great system to me.
Obviously you like it, but then you probably can't imagine anything better - or perhaps you did and it was already patented.
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They didn't get the idea independently, it's just that stereolithography is really old already.
The real patents have expired and that patent on using weak points to allow breaking off the supports should never have been granted.
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I don't think it's great system either; but it is the system and it's working as designed. So you're not going to get it changed, or at least much, by low-level bitching or simplistic protests. The only thing I really "like" about it is that the government is operating within the limits it is authorized to; I actually find that rare and precious, these days.
Anyway, if you want to change it, you need to get after a constitutional amendment, because that's the source of the mechanism.
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They haven't shipped and the device hasn't been used commercially ... 3D Systems is basing their suit completely on supposition. No way in the world even the dumbest jury in Texas would judge it infringement if they simply removed the feature, no the real problem is that they are going to drag out the proceedings to run up legal costs.
Make & Re-use (Score:5, Interesting)
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Check out the filabot on kickstarter.com.
It turns plastic into little shards which it then melts into a filament.
Issues: Different plastics have different melting points, some break down before they melt, some shrink as they cool, and some don't stick to themselves unless both sides of a weld are hot.
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"I wish someone would make a companion 3d printer product that will recycle plastics into the plastic used to print things with some of these 3d printers."
That might be a good idea, but it probably would not be a cheap device (cheaper than the "printer", though).
In the meantime, commercial recyclers have sprung up that will buy your waste. Not at a wonderful price, but it's better than nothing.
Re:Make & Re-use (Score:4, Informative)
These exist. There's even a contest to build a reliable, sub-$250 home filament extruder. Filabot used to have the lead, but http://www.3ders.org/articles/20121023-making-a-plastic-filament-extruder.html [3ders.org] is also fairly interesting. But none of them seem to be close enough to finalized to actually use in daily life yet. I've heard someone say that it'd be easier/cheaper to just buy loads of plastic pellets rather than dealing with impure plastics from recycled materials. Pellets seem to be about 1/5th to 1/10th the price of good filament.
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3D printers are not Mr. Fusion. You can't just toss in any old banana-colored plastic and get good results. You've got to know the difference between thermoset and thermoplastic families, and then the properties of the individual resins in each (PET, ABS, PVA, HDPE, etc. etc.) Then you've got to consider the numerous additives that most plastic parts will have in them, UV inhibitors, metal particles for EMI shielding, etc. Some plastics and additives are benign, others are quite toxic when heated.
If you wan
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Have you used one before?
A poorly printed model can have limited stength across the grain, but that can be improved with a few tweaks to print speed and heater control. They are surprisingly strong in line with their filaments, and the slicing software can cross hatch these to give better strength in multiple directions.
I have no problem using my Solidoodle ABS prints for structural applications, but like anything you have to understand there are some some limitations.
Card slot? (Score:2)
What does it need a "card slot" to make a sound when done? What's wrong with a good old fashioned piezoelectric buzzer to make a beep?
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It needs a card slot to store the print instructions on, so you don't need a computer to be on, active and not-disrupting-the-usb for the duration of the whole print. Trust me, it can be immensely frustrating if your print is halfway done and suddenly your computer goes "welp don't need that usb anymore oh hey that's a usb let's recognize it again!"
Then again, that computer was always a spaz.
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usb inferior to serial and ps/2 for many apps (Score:2)
that's a clear argument for serial port use. since almost all motherboards have that, that is what should be used for machine control. just as serious department stores and restaurant POS systems use the serial and not USB, that "spazzing" behavior you mention is a problem
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What's ironic is that most of the electronics sets use a simulated com port for communication.
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Um, you're being funny right?
Most motherboards I see today do not in fact have serial ports anymore at all because USB has taken over.
To be fair, I'd use Wifi direct or Bluetooth to transfer the instructions to the device wirelessly to its on-board memory.
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don't know everything about your machine's motherboard, do you? post the model number for me.
no, I'm not being funny. go look at the motherboards on egghead.com or fryes. they have serial port - the header pins will be there and can be hooked to cable going outside the chassis even if most of the time that isn't done.
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You feel like running your mouth off, go right ahead:
http://www.dell.com/ca/p/inspiron-660s/pd [dell.com]
#1 desktop on Dell's website. No, most people don't have home-built custom PCs, they order them mail-order like this.
Sure, my motherboard has one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebabcock/3600893754/in/set-72157619247481171 [flickr.com] but that's because I'm an enthusiast and shopped around for one that did. Quite a few did not at the time.
This isn't news either, Intel's been trying to kill off serial ports since 2001: http: [theregister.co.uk]
TFS writer didn't read TFA (Score:1)
"Originally, the new Solidoodle 3 printer was announced at $500; the price has crept up to $800..."
The Solidoodle 3 was announced a month ago, for $800: http://www.solidoodle.com/2012/11/solidoodle-3-3d-printer/
The Solidoodle 2 has been shipping since last summer and still costs $500.
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3D Printing is not The Answer to Everything (Score:3)
The Answer to Everything is ... wait a minute -- uhmm...
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42
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beat me to it by just a few minutes...