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Sla printers

Discussion in 'Off Topic' started by colton81, May 9, 2017.

  1. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Hell something as good as the Form2 has issues with settings. Just like FDM there is an experimentation curve. Sux because UNLIKE the FDM you cant easily evaluate a print in progress.

    Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
     
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  2. Geof

    Geof Volunteer Moderator
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    @WheresWaldo im going to add a beer to the iou tab ive got going. Couldnt have said it better myself. Cheers for that.
     
  3. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    I see where your coming from completely. Trust me ive done alot of searching in resin printers as well as joining other forums and seeing the responses from. And yes the cheaper printers ive seen horror stories the same as FDM printers. But when you look at a $2,500 SLA printer on kickstarter and the company was never heard of before its harder to throw that cash down as apposed to a company that has deleiverd several printers before and are only asking for $200 but at this point it's obviously all speculation until someone recieved that printer at that price. As far as looking for 100% success thats never been said. I was saying for $200 to get a sla printer to just get into the market seems more viable then spending $1,300 on a sla kit when im not sure if thats what im wanting to get into. them being based in california i take that with a grain of salt. I mean look at Robo based in the same area but might as well be China based for their bad customer service. I was looking at the D7 but thats $300 more thats the only reason i wasnt really wanting to get it but didnt think about at least having a comunity to help with any issues. Its still a toss up for me if i want to go with a dual extrusion FDM like Sigma R17 or a SLA which if i go SLA after all of this i might be better off dropping the same amount.
     
  4. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    I understand why @Geof would look at these, as it expands his business and therefore it is an easy purchasing decision. I haven't jumped on that bandwagon yet since I have most of my models printed with an SLS printer. I am just now exploring having my models printed with SLA technology and I know that it would be easy to prototype SLA prints on a small personal SLA printer. But I rarely print entire objects, just sub-sections of models and the Robo does that just fine, so far. Bottom line, If all you want to do is play with your printers, buy whatever you want. If you actually use your printer to do more than play wouldn't it be better to decide what you need the printer for before you settle on a print technology?

    Now your last comment is even more confusing, a dual extrusion FDM printer v SLA? Not even in the same league! Really sounds like you are just not sure what you want and appear to be solely fascinated by the tech.
     
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  5. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    The reason im looking at the dual extrusion or sla is should i go with sla for super fine prints that a fdm cant do or should i go with a dual extrusion to beable to print soluble supports. The soluble supports is the only reason i want dual extrusion i dont really see a reason for me to need more then 1 color prints or any other material mixed. From what everyone has said on here i think my best bet is to just stick with fdm for now. I appreciate everyoned advice and pretty much see now sla is a neat piece of technology but not really worth the money at yhis point.

    Now on to sls not sure if youve seen but supposedly form labs is/might be coming out with a sls desktop printer called the fuse 1. Im not very informed on sls but from what ive understood thats been around for awhile but the printers were just to damn expensive. Do you have a sls printer?
     
  6. daniel871

    daniel871 Well-Known Member

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    SLS printers typically start in the six-digit price range (unless you find one for a steal in an auction somewhere).

    Also, they require a *lot* of juice to run properly as well as an air supply that is capable of feeding the blowers (the one I recently saw in an auction required 440V at 60 amps for both the machine and air supply).
     
  7. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    I do not own any SLS printer nor am I in the market to buy one. My use case is different than @Geof, some of his business is being a print service, none of mine is. I sell a lot of pre-printed 3D models but all of them directly from a print service. It works well for small volume and small models. So my printer is used for testing parts of models or printing things my wife can put on her desk at work. I don't need dual extrusion or super fine detail for tchotchkes. Knowing that, is one reason I haven't jumped on the tech bandwagon and flittered from one printing tech to another.

    Like I said, its your money, spend it how you want, just be realistic about your expectations. Since you have on more than one occasion mentioned someone else knowing/approving your purchase make sure you can justify your purchase to the other person. I am like nearly every human being and can always justify a purchase to myself, I am sure you can too. It is when you need to explain it to someone else with reasonableness that you can really learn your own motives.
     
  8. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    Yea i get what your saying i think ill hold off on sla for awhile. If only i could win the lottery and buy it all lol
     
  9. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    @colton81 I am in the same boat as you, I love the tech and I almost pulled the trigger last month on a SLA LCD based printer. I usually just buy what I want and then explain the purchase later even though that approach pisses off my wife at times. This is one of the times I don't want the hassle.

    Then on top of that, even though I have an idea of what I want the printer for, I am not sure that SLA is the only way to accomplish what I want. If it was the only way then purchasing an SLA printer would be a no brainer. Ideally for me, a small cheap SLS printer would be even better, but as @daniel871 pointed out, they ain't cheap or small. And even though SLA might do as a replacement technology I am so familiar with FDM and learned how to do a lot of stuff with FDM I am not sure what the net gain is. Are their models I build that can't be printed with FDM, yes there are, but for those very few things it is harder to justify SLA v. the idea of using a dual extruder printer to print dissimilar materials at the same time.

    I am sure that someday we will both own an SLA printer. I would just hate to see us both do that when we aren't really ready to invest the cycles to really learn how to use them to their maximum advantage. You still have challenges ahead of you with your C2, master it and you will be surprised at the amazing things you can accomplish. Then as part of this community you can assist @mark tomlinson with all the C2 questions that come up so he isn't the only one contributing to the C2/R2 community knowledge base. We need people with passion like yours especially since we all see the level of commitment Robo has shown in the past with regard to customer service and the service life of previous products.
     
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  10. colton81

    colton81 Active Member

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    Yea i agree just going to focus on FDM for now. And get all these C2 issues situated.
     
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  11. Pilsnerboy

    Pilsnerboy New Member

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    I'm interested in getting my hands on that but I just bought a C2 Compact and recently ordered Centerline alloy wheels for my truck.
     

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