birchwood for the abs upgrade???

I can appreciate that as an initial reaction, but you may want to wait until you see it. A lot of the bots out there use birchwood for a frame and are rock solid. The Ultimaker, which is one of the best, if not the best, out there uses 1/4" birch all around.

A possible advantage to wood is that it is probably going to be easier to peel the kapton tape off when you need to change it.

I know there is a another machine out there that uses a wood build plate, but can't remember which. Maybe someone can do a search and see which one to point people to the feedback on it?

Another point is that you should probably consider your bed to be a wear part anyways. You're going to inevitably scuff it up over time. Then you upgrage to borosilicate glass or marble. Or you decide to start running Nylon and get some Garolite. Maybe once people start using their printers and want to upgrade, a few of us can get a group buy on some borosilicate glass started.

My small complaint on the update is that they didn't provide any of the information people are looking for to get started on upgrades (other than the rods)

 

Hey Guys. Where do you see they are using the Birchwood, and for what exactly? Thanks, and i'll point this towards them.

 

Maybe Harry can clear up whether the actual build surface is wood or if the wood is just the carriage, which then has HBP board, and some other build platform material (borosilicate glass would be spectacular if they're taking requests). I read it as the actual material you are printing on is black birch which would have a heated PCB beneath it.

I really don't think people should be scared of the wood As a mechanical engineer in the medical and aerospace industries, wood isn't even something I consider when designing, but I really think it works great in these printers. The laminated birch that is used is light, strong, and flat.

The Ultimaker is an absolutely awesome printer with a wooden z-axis platform and wooden z-axis arms. The actual stock build platform (i.e. what you are printing onto) is acrylic, but people have switched it out with other materials depending on what they are printing (aluminum, glass, garolite, etc). Here is a pic:

@Seshan: In my opinion, the reason that Makerbot went away from wood is about 10% to get a more stable frame and 90% for people to perceive that they have a higher quality product. I have a rep 1 with a wood frame and wood z-axis carriage. I run it at 120mm/s and 50um regularly and am quite happy with it. There are some reliability issues with the electronics. The ABS arms that attach the z-axis carriage to the rails are horribly designed and sag under temperature due to a coefficient of thermal expansion issue. BUT, neither of those issues has anything to do with the wood frame or the wood z-axis carriage. I have read and experienced plenty of issues with rep 1, but none really due to the wood construction.

@justin: you want your garolite to be what your are printing nylon directly onto. ABS would be kapton tape on top of that nylon. circuit board goes underneath the garolite.

 

yes. Sorry. I can see how that might have been confusing.

 

I have pointed this post to the team. They'll get an answer written up, or i'll write something if they get back to me first.