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MIT team develops 3D printer that's 10x faster than comparable 3D printers
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jmpman 8y agoSweet. Let’s see a benchy.
- LanceH 8y agoThey should compare speeds printing benches.
- slededit 8y agoI wonder why they needed the laser pre-heater. I can't imagine it is that dramatically more effective than resistive heating. Even if it is, just having a longer pre-heater to make up for it would have to be cheaper. EDIT: Did a bit of research, a major benefit of laser heating is direct control of energy transfer so you can be sure your heating the plastic to the right temperature regardless of how fast its moving through the heater. Still, aren't all these advantages eliminated by the traditional primary heater immediately after?
- leowoo91 8y agoThat is almost steampunk, we need cyberpunk :-P
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- aeleos 8y agoIt’s definitely possible that you couldn’t reach the speeds that they are with any kind of traditional heater cartridge. You need a lot of power directly on the filament to melt is at quickly as they are.
- Ardren 8y agoTitan 3D Robotics has a extruder that claims to be able to print 1 pound of filament an hour which for ABS would be able 400 cm^3 (I think?) I believe it's water cooled but still looks to be using traditional heater cartridges. Specs: http://www.titan3drobotics.com/atlas/ http://www.titan3drobotics.com/atlas/ Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKPKIGcrlFU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKPKIGcrlFU
- Animats 8y agoRight. That's what you get when you build a 3D printer like a CNC machine. Titan takes in pellets directly, rather than bothering with filament. They probably use a heating system and drive screw like an injection molding machine. They can print with more plastics than filament printers. They end up with a lot of moving mass on the print head, but that's what big motors and controllers are for. The Titan unit uses 14KW of power. I'd once considered heating the surface to which you are bonding with a laser, just ahead of the extruder, so you weld hot surface to hot surface, not hot surface to cold surface. That's why filament type 3D printers make such weak joints between layers.
- Ardren 8y agoI think the 400cm^3 figure was for the non-pellet version while the pellet version can use 10mm nozzles and extrudes a ridiculous amount more. I wish there was more published information about both of their extruders, they look quite interesting. I'm guessing that absurd power requirement is for the 85C heated enclosure variant, otherwise I'm no idea where the 60amps are going. I remember reading about a slicer with an option to use the hotend just as a heat source that traced the previous layer to smooth/blend it. Using a laser may be a good method of improving the surface finish as well.
- walrus01 8y agoWhat is the $ per kilogram cost difference if you can buy bulk PLA plastic pellets vs. buying filament on a roll? For a benchmark comparison figure the generally well-reviewed Monoprice filament ranges from $18 to $20 per 1kg spool.
- nickparker 8y agoThe laser penetrates the filament heating it internally instead of only heating the outer surface. It's near-infrared (808 nm) so it heats the small cylinder of filament essentially uniformly throughout its volume. It's also nice because they can vary laser power much more effectively than you can vary the temperature of a conduction surface. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.05918.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.05918.pdf
- sometimesijust 8y agoAnd it is low friction since it does not need surface contact.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- usertest1 8y agotest
- onesun 8y agoI'm guessing here, but it could be possible that the actual heating of the filament is done entirely with the laser, and the job of the heated nozzle is simply to keep the filament at temperature all the way until it is extruded. It may have not been possible or feasible to combine the laser heater and nozzle, hence the need for both parts.
- liamkinne 8y agoWhen the Laser heats the filament, it's 1.75mm in diameter, so to get it down to the 0.4mm diameter for extrusion a nozzle is still required which also needs some heat so the plastic doesn't resolidify.
- snarfy 8y agoThe temperature needs to be consistent first. There is a PID cycle the nozzle goes through to keep it consistent. If you look at the temperature on a graph during print, it's not a flat line but rather a sine wave as the PID cycles. My printer has an LED that flashes with the heating element, and you can see it work more during heavy extrusion to keep the temperature up. The frequency of the cycle is related to the mass of the nozzle/heater and speed of extrusion. I can only imagine at that speed they could not get a consistent PID loop with a traditional heater.
- falcolas 8y agoFWIW, a sin wave is usually a sign of a simple threshold based controller, not a PID loop (or if it is a PID loop, it's very poorly tuned). A well tuned pid loop will not exhibit any periodic tendencies, though I would expect that it would exhibit changes as the filament extrusion is stopped and started.
- syntaxing 8y agoThe mode of heat transfer is very important for applications like this. Higher mass flow means you need a hotter heater which can get tricky for long term usage or you'll have to use some sort of refractory or ceramic based heater. Also with conduction, the biggest problem is heat loss either due to the environment of the system . It is almost impossible to direct all your energy towards a single source with conduction. Radiation on the other hand works really well for this type of application. Especially for lasers since the energy sources is highly polarized and condensed. The other method might be to use induction heaters or microwave, but plastics do not play well with that.
- yosito 8y agoFast and loud! Holy hell! I thought dot matrix printers were loud.
- kentlyons 8y agoHere is the paper they published: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1709/1709.05918.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1709/1709.05918.pdf And the press release from last year: http://news.mit.edu/2017/new-3-d-printer-10-times-faster-commercial-counterparts-1129 http://news.mit.edu/2017/new-3-d-printer-10-times-faster-com...
- japhyr 8y ago> All technologies are improved with lasers. I love this writing style, clear and informative but playful at the same time.
- logicallee 8y agoSorry, but based on some style issues in the rest of the document, I don't think that was meant to be playful. I think it just meant "The lasers improve all aspects of" this technology. (I could be wrong.)
- johnyesberg 8y agoSounds like a quote from Dr Evil.
- luckylittle 8y agoStep 1: Buy a 3D printer Step 2: Print a 3D printer Step 3: Return the 3D printer
- TylerE 8y ago'Cept the filament probably costs more per unit of weight than the printer...plus shitty plastic and not metal.
- ngcc_hk 8y agoAs hobby goes 3D printer really no good. Laser is fast and even some Cnc ok. But hours and hours ... Hope this help as having a 3D model of your favourite item is great. Especially you can like programming iterate through it quickly. Learning is part of the fun.
- amelius 8y agoWell if you order an object online, then you have to wait 1+ days for it to arrive ;)
- jakobegger 8y agoMore like 2 weeks for Shapeways...
- brianwawok 8y agoHobby 3D is geat for me. Find some DnD minis I need, load 36 or so to a SD card, go feed into printer, and 24h later I have $100 worth of minis printed for $0.50 in plastic. A $200 ender3 pays for itself real quick.
- aeleos 8y agoThese are some really cool and novel developments at improving the speed of 3d printers. While some of these might take a while (or forever) to come to desktop 3d printers its great that advancements like these are being made to push 3d printing forward.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoHow does this compare to Carbon? https://www.carbon3d.com/ https://www.carbon3d.com/
- sometimesijust 8y agoIt does not. That's like comparing apple orchards to single oranges. But if you want to just compare print volumes then the paper claims ~127cm^3/hr build rate in a prototype system with a peak extrusion rate of twice that.
- pasta 8y agoThat's a good question because at the moment Carbon printers are the fastest and (most important) produce production ready materials.
- KaiserPro 8y agoresin can be much faster, but is not really that great for deasktop/at home printing. Yes there are DLP printers for enthusiasts, but the multi-stage process is not that great, as the chemicals are pretty noxious. There are a greater range of cheaper plastics available for extruding.
- pontifier 8y agoI've got a design for a printer that should be about 10,000 times faster than this. It's really a game of data transfer speed. How fast can you transfer information about solid vs non-solid into space? The velocity and acceleration of that printer is very impressive, but maxing out the movement speed of a single physical nozzle is not going to get us where we need to be in the future. If anyone is interested in collaborating with me, I'd love to talk.
- thanksDr 8y agoCan you give us an outline?
- pontifier 8y agoSure, the basic idea is to separate data transfer from what I call locking. Data transfer can be done quickly, then locking can happen passively at whatever rate it needs. Data transfer can take many forms. A simple example is an array of needles,pointing downward, forming a horizontal plane. The plane of needles is withdrawn upward through a granular material and dropplets of glue bind the material only where it should be hardened. In this example there is a resolution tradeoff, but you can see that the "printing" is basically completed in one pass of the plane through the print volume. Holographic processes could transfer data to the entire volume at once. The key is looking at the problem as a data transfer problem. We are very good at moving data very quickly.
- analognoise 8y agoThe number of pins in such a design would dictate your surface roughness. Where would you be loading the glue from, if they're also being drawn through the binder. Also, glue doesn't set instantaneously. I can see only problems with this approach?
- pontifier 8y agoThat is the resolution tradeoff with this particular method. Each needle would be fed from a tube connected to its own control valve. Non bound material would act as support while the glue (or other binding agent) worked. In my imagination I see a chair made from shredded tires, and bonded with a silicon caulking like substance. The shredded tires would be filled into a container between the needles as the printing array rises.
- boulos 8y agoFrom the headline, I assumed this was going to be an MIT writeup of Inkbit. Instead it seems to be another MIT group but at the opposite end of the quality spectrum (this is low-ish quality but super fast, while Inkbit is high quality and yet fast). Cool!
- samstave 8y agoMore info on inkbit please.
- jeffchuber 8y ago3ders is one of the best blogs in 3D - worth a follow
- Pica_soO 8y agoIf you could have a liquid 3D printer below the starting surface and a solid PLA printer above, you could start in the middle of the object and print into two directions, at twice the speed. Of course- the basic question remains, what holds the middle? Retractable titanium bolt?
- tbenst 8y ago10x faster is a bit exaggerated; maybe 2-3x faster than typical desktop FFF and still slower than HP or Carbon
- brandonjm 8y agoJust at a glance it looks about 10x faster than my Prusa, but I agree it wouldn't be much more than 2-3x faster than larger scale printers for sure. I don't think Carbon would come under "comparable 3D printers" as it is resin based which is often faster.
- crocal 8y agoPrinter is coming...
- usertest1 8y agowow that' pretty cool... so awesome
- walrus01 8y agoRegarding "normal" 3d printer technology, anyone who's thinking of getting a basic one to play around with, take a look at the Creality CR-10S. It sells for $369. There's lots of youtube videos of sample output from it and reviews. The bigger version of the same thing which can print 50 x 50 x 50 cm volume, the CR-10S5 is $629. I have no connection to the manufacturer or Chinese vendors, just throwing the name of something I'm satisfied with out there.
- brianwawok 8y agoEnder3 can be found under $200 and is excellent. I think it is similar to the 10s
- KaiserPro 8y agoThe threaded filament feed is a really nice touch.
- stevespang 8y ago>Grace wrote at 12/8/2018 1:45:34 AM: >That picture is neither Jamison nor Professor Hart; and >Jamison Go is a PhD student, not a professor
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoI saw this 2 years ago. Long story short, you need a fiber laser and a driving circuit to do this. Sure it's 10x the speed, but it's almost 100x the price. A Creality Ender 3 is around $200. This printer, with fiber laser, is around $15-20k. And the Ender 3 can't make moves that fast. The Atmega chip is just a 16 MHz chip. You can't generate the steps required even using Klipper firmware (which is a bitbanging firmware that uses your desktop CPU as motion planner). You could generate the steps using one of the ARM based boards, but you'd double your BOM - Smoothieboard and Duet both would be around the $150-$200 but can generate the required steps. The BeagleBone Black can generate upwards of 1M steps/sec, which is on the high end of pro-sumer. It's awesome, but it's a pie-in-the-sky that most of us would never even have the source to buy, let alone approach.
- ravedave5 8y agoDon't forget all 3d printers were 15k not that long ago.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoUnfortunately, a large portion of that was due to patent interference from Stratasys. https://hackaday.com/2013/09/11/3d-printering-key-patents/ https://hackaday.com/2013/09/11/3d-printering-key-patents/ 2009 was when the patent expired. And that's when RepRap picked up rather quickly. The patent was handled since 1989 reminded me the same way the Wrights brought avionics to its knees in the US until the US busted the patent for WWI. To make a 3d printer, all you need is a slow controller for handing gcode, 4 stepper controllers, 4 stepper motors, thermistors, heated bed, and heated tip. Worst case, before being able to buy calibrated filament, you could use weed whacker line, and put in its equivalent diameter However, one trend I see, is that optics does not lower in price. Sure, lasers have gotten cheaper. But when you talk about 200 laser diodes at 5w each and using a complicated assortment of lenses and glass fiber optics, that stuff's $$$$$. The costs can come down from $50k to $20k, but it's still way out of the reach of 'buy on ebay or amazon'.
- johnday 8y agoExactly. Just buy 100 Ender3s for somewhere around £15,000 and run them in parallel.
- dmritard96 8y agoI dont think I have ever read an article about MIT students that didnt start its headline with MIT, is this university policy of some sort?
- suyash 8y agoIt's the name that sells :)
- dumbfoundded 8y agoWell, if it's done by professors at MIT, it makes sense. I run a cannabis company (cbd). My cofounder and I were roommates at MIT. We rarely mention it in our industry.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- karmakaze 8y ago10x faster is a substantial achievement for anyone waiting for 3D items being made. For the technology as a whole we need something that changes more than a constant factor, i.e. better than O(n^3) because we're still using filament that's time proportional to volume of the object. This isn't entirely clear cut though. For instance laser printers technically do trace a dot of light across a page, but a single raster scan is almost instantaneous compared to the time scales of larger operations. Not having to physically move a 'print head' seems to be the winning design.
- abecedarius 8y agoThe 'obvious' way to do that: parallel heads across the whole surface, so time is O(height). Feynman brought this up in https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/290G/Papers/Feynman83.pdf https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/290G/Papers/Feynman... (an 80s followup to "Plenty of Room at the Bottom"): > You should have a thicker machine with tubes and pipes that brings in chemicals. Tubes with controllable valves - all very tiny. What I want is to build in three dimensions by squirting the various substances from different holes that are electrically controlled, and by rapidly working my way back and doing layer after layer, I make a three-dimensional pattern. Added: since mechanical frequencies scale up as size scales down, this sort of design would ideally scale as O(1). That is, with smaller parts and increasing resolution, you have O(n^2) parts, each working O(n) faster, to produce O(n^3) units times O(n^-3) unit volume = O(1) volume per unit time.
- johnday 8y agoThis form of fabrication exists and is known as DLP. I have a DLP printer that cost me less than £500.
- abecedarius 8y agoNeat, I didn't know of that! Feynman was looking further out to a machine not limited to one material at a time.
- crwalker 8y agoFused filament fabrication (FFF) is fighting against physics in the same way that O(n) vs O(n^2) vs O(n!) algorithms have wildly different performance at scale. It's a point solution, depositing ~1 voxel per unit of time. Running print heads in parallel is still O(1). Speeding up the print head runs out of steam because you run into vibration limits for the machinery (you can hear the rattling in the audio for this article). To really scale you need to deposit ~n voxels per unit of time (HP's MJF technology) or ~n^2 (Carbon's CLIP). You need lots of voxels for high resolution for most applications. There are certain exceptions like prototyping in PETG or 3D printing concrete houses where the speed limitations of FFF may not be a big issue. But for 3D printing to compete with many forms of traditional manufacturing, simultaneous parallel structuring of matter is key.
- ncmncm 8y agoI like the last comment, that says the pic is not of the people named, and that one of the professors named is not a professor. Who are those guys, then?