- Thread starter ukracer
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I guess i was not clear enough.....given you can make a few models with one roll of PLA i would assume ,given a buyer exists locally, i imagine you could make a profit . But what i fail to see is one where these customers come from.
I also cant see how the maths work out on time versus reward as many prints take over 8 hours. To have a viable income. I would guess you need to make €100 taking i to account things such as electric wear and tear , raw materials , tax etc.
mrsbruce
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Funnily enough, I was watching a ‘Makers Muse’ vid on youtube last night about that exact subject. Might be worth watching, as he made the exact points you make.
Luke
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Some friends of mine founded https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/StealthMounts/
A lot of the brackets are 3D printed. They've invested in an injection moulding machine and tooling for the really popular products.
They have a farm of 3D printers running all day, 5 or 6 of them last time I asked. The added bonus is that they can fit multiple products on each 3D printer bed, so the time the printer can be left unattended for is quite long.
A lot of the brackets are 3D printed. They've invested in an injection moulding machine and tooling for the really popular products.
They have a farm of 3D printers running all day, 5 or 6 of them last time I asked. The added bonus is that they can fit multiple products on each 3D printer bed, so the time the printer can be left unattended for is quite long.
PhillipM
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That's all I used to do making airboxes, stack the bed full and leave it, come back later on when it was done.
As for print times - printers are slow, no two ways about it, but also for anyone using it to make production brackets, bushes, parts that are faster/lighter to make as part of another job, they're probably using the time making the other bits while it prints anyway - and anyone making production parts batch parts is going to have reworked their printer for more speed or bought a commercial one that can push a lot more plastic than say your A8 does.
Just for comparison, going from your earlier settings (40mm/s, 0.2 layer, 0.4mm nozzle) - that's only 4mm^3/s when it's at full speed - those batches of mounts I was doing a while ago:
Were printed with it pushing 32mm^3/s -and I've just about finished modifying the printer so it can go to 40-45mm^3/s - it makes a massive difference in terms of what you're waiting for, and if you don't mind spending a little more there's machines that then make mine look silly. Even then, I generally just stack half a dozen on the bed, set it going, go and work on other parts.
Obviously, for even bigger batches of parts, you can print moulds or tools to allow you to make them more conventional, faster ways, but without any serious tooling/moulding costs.
As for print times - printers are slow, no two ways about it, but also for anyone using it to make production brackets, bushes, parts that are faster/lighter to make as part of another job, they're probably using the time making the other bits while it prints anyway - and anyone making production parts batch parts is going to have reworked their printer for more speed or bought a commercial one that can push a lot more plastic than say your A8 does.
Just for comparison, going from your earlier settings (40mm/s, 0.2 layer, 0.4mm nozzle) - that's only 4mm^3/s when it's at full speed - those batches of mounts I was doing a while ago:
Were printed with it pushing 32mm^3/s -and I've just about finished modifying the printer so it can go to 40-45mm^3/s - it makes a massive difference in terms of what you're waiting for, and if you don't mind spending a little more there's machines that then make mine look silly. Even then, I generally just stack half a dozen on the bed, set it going, go and work on other parts.
Obviously, for even bigger batches of parts, you can print moulds or tools to allow you to make them more conventional, faster ways, but without any serious tooling/moulding costs.
cu means copper to me
I get that...……
I get that...……
So I see the 40 mm/s travel relates to 4 whatevers, what does the whatevers mean
bigegg
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so an inch and a quarter cube of solid plastic every second?
or a 1mm wide, 1mm deep layer 32mm long. every second.
Hopefuldave
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32mm x 1mm x 1mm, I'd like to see one that could do a 32mm cube in a second - more like injection moulding!
Dave H. (the other one)
bigegg
Scream Not Working Because Space Make Deaf
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the originally quoted "32mm ^3 /s" is ambiguous, but I realised it had to be 32 cu mm, not 32mm cubed...
and then didn't edit properly
^ I figured as we were talking increasing volume and the only way to get it was push up the extrusion volume as otherwise it would need ludicrous travel speeds.
Be interesting to see if that makes much difference to quality / strength. I would guess you would need more [power to the hot end, so even with mosfets that they love in A8 world the power supply may need work too
Be interesting to see if that makes much difference to quality / strength. I would guess you would need more [power to the hot end, so even with mosfets that they love in A8 world the power supply may need work too
What on earth are they?
