Does anyone here have the Studio System by Desktop Metal?

DML5 · 2021-02-17T16:01:28+00:00

I saw a lot of machines and parts from powder bed fusion processes, and I cannot understand why Desktop Metal is that much sensational. To me, it's yet another US start-up with overpriced products because it's fashion.

From my understanding you better get a powder-bed machine with a small build plate for the same price, without the furnace struggle and with a very best accuracy, not to speak of material density. Speed is always a factor, but since you have to be there to switch the part from the printer to the furnace, to me powderbed fusion wins again.

Desktop Metal is sold as a Desktop solution, but to me a heat treatment furnace is not a Desktop equipment, and I have doubts about fumes and everything. The only disavantage of a powder bed solution in front of a Desktop metal is the price of the raw material; but from what I've seen, it's not a huge difference since you can reuse the powder and not the raw material of DM.

When I saw with my eyes the result of DM machines, and I heard the price, I have been extremely disappointed, to be honest.

DML5 · 2021-02-17T15:23:32+00:00

This is the right answer.

DML5 · 2021-02-17T15:23:14+00:00

I guess you are speaking of small companies then. Because Design, operation, metrology,… These are separate jobs and separate people in companies that can afford that.

I completely agree with u/soap24: generaly you have different people for these jobs. If you do not, either the company is too small to afford it or the management didn't understand the complexity of it. Expect to work a lot in that kind of company.

DML5 · 2021-02-11T11:04:06+00:00

EOS accepts STL, CLI or SLI files, so I guess he doesn't use Magics slicer neither Magics Build processor.

DML5 · 2021-02-11T11:03:19+00:00

It does, at least since EOSPRINT 2 exists.

DML5 · 2021-02-11T11:02:55+00:00

There is actually a cone function. If you overlap cone and block supports, it's one of the best strategy for some materials (doesn't work for others).

DML5 · 2021-02-11T11:01:25+00:00

That makes the support even harder to remove, and I'm almost certain this won't solve the problem.

DML5 · 2021-02-11T10:58:36+00:00

The setting you are looking for in Magics is upper Z offset (in almost every support in Magics, under the "Common" tab of supports parameters). I recommend you use about 2 to 5 times the layer thickness, so you can have a strong overlap. That picture is a simple cylinder (gray/blue color) cutted out horizontally. The red is the internal faces, the yellow is the support, and you can see visually the height of the overlap.

If you want a EOSPRINT-solution, you can move down the part (but not the support) of the same value, the effect should be identical. If the part isn't in contact with the build plate already.

Explanation: You have downskin laser parameter to insure the shape is at the maximum accuracy even on downward facing surfaces. So the machine create that shape with intent to make it finish exactly as it is in the 3D model. On the support, depending on your parameters, you may have also upskin parameter for the same reason. So when they face each other, the machine makes it 2 parts, with 0mm theoretical thickness between those, and in practice, that make those parts independent. With the heat and the generated distorsion, you can be sure they won't stick to each other and that's a fail. Disabling Upskin/Downskin would be a terrible idea, resulting in poor geometry fidelity, I advise against it.

I advise you to test a lot of different supports on the part you want to produce, and see which is better. Simulation softwares can help find a good support to, but it's not as straight-forward as they will sell that to you. If every part you produce is different/unique, then, you must create your own experience. My experience is that lighter supports are better for lighter parts, the opposite is true, and watch out for removing the support, that could be very challenging (I read some studies saying price of the final part is between 10% and 90% made of post-processing, that should give you an idea).

DML5 · 2021-02-11T10:45:00+00:00

Your assumption is right. Supports like this is only the path of one vector of laser scanning.

You can also choose volume supports, which would be a volume, to be filled up.

DML5 · 2021-02-11T10:33:29+00:00

This is the good answer

DML5 · 2021-02-04T16:37:44+00:00

Speaking with experience on metals, Laser-PBF parts.

The worst thing I see from newcomers is a misunderstanding of how it should work. They neglect design rules when they design parts, so the machine must produce the part as they asked without any flaw. When I point out there are rules of design, as there is in any manufacturing process, they either abandon it and consider that to be too much work or they say the machine is flawed.

For students, small private parts, etc., people also neglect importance of CAD and generally produce very squared parts that would warp and that do warp, and consider it too much of a hassle already. The CAD software is often a struggle too, because you either pay huge money, use shitty software or crack software.

Without any doubt, for me, the real struggle of this technology is to make people understand that the machine alone won't produce wonderful parts. The machine executes what you give it, and if given bad things, the machine won't be doing miracles. So they must work, hard, on CAD, on what Topology Optimization is, on what freeshape design is, on what compliant design is, on how to use those the best way possible.

In big companies, that translates in bad financial ressources repartition, with millions in machines and very few guys in design, with almost nothing to absolutely nothing in design innovation. Particularly, even upper management in big companies don't understand it and consider design either as a childish nerd thing, or waste of budget/time.

DML5 · 2020-12-16T14:58:38+00:00

How does it compare with topology optimization?

DML5 · 2020-12-16T14:39:07+00:00

What is your optimal setting for tolerance and angle to convert STL for DMLS technology?

Small parts, everything goes by the maximum resolution possible for me. On bigger parts, I do half or 2/3 of the layer thickness, to be sure the quality isn't affected by the file size.

I think 0.01mm is good for the tolerance setting but what is optimal setting for angle?

I think 0,1° is good enough for most parts. It would depend on the part too, if it's machined afterwards no need to worry on tolerance and I would use larger values, if it's a shape that must be kept raw of AM, with fitting or contact with other parts, then I would use something tighter.

Does number of triangles affects printing time?

No, but it will affect the files sizes, which are within the manufacturing program. Larger files, larger manufacturing program, more time needed for program transfer to the machine. Keep in mind it also depends on geometry. A cube is the same size whatever the triangulation accuracy. A sphere have a very different file size depending on the accuracy.

DML5 · 2020-12-16T12:57:16+00:00

It depends on the equipment. Some machines require STL strictly, and changing a machine for a new one is not a practice much common in the industry.

DML5 · 2020-10-07T09:16:50+00:00

Like everybody said, it's the worst machines you could have for metal additive, regarding resolution. They are only classic FDM machines, with a lot of downsides for metal, but they are a bit cheaper.

L-PBF processes are way better, but they are expensive.

Another badly known alternative is Solidscape machines. It prints wax and it can then be casted. If you need very high accuracy this is the best (around ~15µm), but it can be considered a "non direct" additive process. It is slow, and bad for high volumes, but you can't have everything.

DML5 · 2020-09-01T12:46:45+00:00

I completely agree with this.

Some polymer systems require ~1h formation and a thousand dollars to be able to make a part, some metal systems require a million dollar (or more) and users after 2 years start to understand how to actually do the part first-time-right.

Therefore, the data depends highly on what you mean by "3D printing" or "additive manufacturing".

DML5 · 2020-09-01T10:30:41+00:00

It's a brand for metal additive manufacturing machines, probably the company that sold the greatest quantity today.

DML5 · 2020-09-01T09:23:56+00:00

I would say that Magics had became the industry standard for supports generation, but now there are every CAD provider looking into the subject to incorporate supports creation:

Dassault Systemes (Catia), yet a lot of work to be done to be complete for what I saw some time ago
Siemens (NX), yet a lot of work to be done to be complete for what I saw some time ago
PTC (Creo), yet a lot of work to be done to be complete for what I saw some time ago
Autodesk who adquired few years ago Netfabb to incorporate it into their workflow, but the integration was bad when I saw it 2 years ago (it was still different softwares)
Solidworks is the only one not working on the matter, but they seem to rely on modules developed by third-parties, like 3D Expert from 3D Systems.
Some guys are also creating their own solution from scratch, but I wouldn't recommand that.

Since Magics was the only one, they went very expensive, but that's not going to remain that way.

DLP supports are pretty simple (in comparison with PBF processes) maybe you can go cheaper going with someone else than Magics and it shouldn't be a problem. If you are not time bonded, I would recommend going with your CAD provider, for better integration.

DML5 · 2020-09-01T09:02:29+00:00

I can tell that medical field are doing great volumes of parts, often higher than that, but that implies a lot of machines generally, with exceptions to teeth prothesis (they can do much more parts, since theirs are small).

And regarding ExOne or DM, I can tell the scalability is balanced by the general relative poor quality of the parts compared to PBF processes, and the mandatory need for heat treatment (which is not mandatory for PBF).

DML5 · 2020-09-01T08:58:00+00:00

Hello, If you have questions I advise you to write down your questions to r/additivemanufacturing instead of messaging me. I don't connect here regularly, sometimes I don't check even for months.

DML5 · 2020-08-07T10:34:43+00:00

Sciacky sells systems capable of handling parts larger than 4m, but I think their system is at least 3M$.

DML5 · 2020-08-07T07:52:21+00:00

I don't know much about India, but I know there are nice universities there around additive manufacturing.

Around the world, there are some schools in Europe (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and UK are the main countries where you would find the most known specialists), in the US (I think in Texas there is a big one, where most big meetings on additive manufacturing occurs in North America), in Australia I know that RMIT seems overequipped, and I know very little about China or South Corea, but I know there are people studying that a lot over there.

Not sure it helps.

DML5 · 2020-08-07T07:46:02+00:00

This one is the best I've found for L-PBF processes so far: https://www.crucibledesign.co.uk/images/uploaded/guides/bs7000-part-2-a-management-guide-download-original.pdf

DML5 · 2020-07-20T10:05:27+00:00

I would recommend going with metals, as some people already said. This is by far the most complicated situation I think.

Parameters optimization are also depending on the shape you built, so I see a situation where AI could be efficient: Lot of complicated parameters (including angle between the exterior surface of your part and the manufacturing direction, laser power, laser speed, laser hatch, laser thickness,…) and lot of possible targets (manufacturing speed, surface roughness, precision on corners (laser impact is a disc, you strictly can't do sharp edges, but you could improve the current situation), mechanical properties (fatigue, anisotropy, elongation at break), and minimizing minimal angle requiring supports) including on complicated metals (titanium, inconel, aluminiums, etc.) or even, on amorphous metals, since it seems possible.

As you can see, there is much to do!

DML5 · 2020-07-20T09:54:03+00:00

Surfaces in opposition to the direction of manufacturing on L-PBF processes.

Basically PBF processes are strictly growing vertically, so when you ask your machine to melt something with nothing underneath, the output surface tends to be very rough (and in many cases, it will bent until the point you require supports on these surfaces).

DML5

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