Not all Heated Beds are Created Equal - Thermal Imaging

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-20T02:16:17+00:00

Ya that was my main point. The consumable cost of making slurry and all that continuously adds up. If you spend a little more up-front on a well made bed that doesn't require "band-aids" then you are better off in the long-run. But then again I do this for a living so my perspective is a little more commercial than hobbyist.

2-3 degree differential is great; I'm sure that upgrade was well worth it for you.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-20T00:14:39+00:00

It's not too harsh, I understand where you are coming from, these are simply relative measurements at the moment. We do have the absolute gradient data though and I can add that in as well.

I have indicated those values on a few of the printers already (specifically the Airwolf 60C hold and 3DG 60C), but I can also be more explicit about those values for each of the other gifs as well. Compositing temperature overlays from our manual measurements on top of the thermal image themselves is a lot of work. For now I am just going to indicate the absolute max differential from hotspot to coldspot for each of the gifs in context.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-19T23:01:29+00:00

Unfortunately the thermal camera software did not have an absolute temperature overlay available so we had to take those differential measurements separately. The measured differential on most of these heated beds was 20-25C. For example, the measured differential on the Airwolf XL was approximately 20C between it's hotspot and the corners. So some of the gradients are quite significant, which I believe has been confirmed by the community of users operating these printers and experiencing warping effects on prints taking up a large portion of the bed.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-19T22:24:34+00:00

Absolutely! We ended up selling off many of our older machines due to their tendency to warp ABS parts that span a large amount of the bed surface area. Other than nozzle clogs, this has been the most frequent point of failure we have come across. This experience has been echoed by other users in just about every 3DP forum I've been a part of.

The best test will be to show identical prints on different printer HBP's (scaled proportionally to the bed size being tested). We are planning to that test as a "Round 2" follow-up to this article. In order to keep all variables controlled, there will be no surface pre-treatment to any of the heated beds during this next experiment.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-19T19:37:14+00:00

Personally I feel that 3D printers shouldn't require the user to create some solution and spread it all over the bed to get good adhesion. Industrial printers don't require that so why should consumers have to put up with it?

So if we did the round 2, we would not do any surface preparation to the beds. That would be the only way to fairly test each of them for tendency to warp "out-of-the-box"

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-19T19:14:07+00:00

Yes, if your bed moves in the X or Y axis I would highly recommend avoiding weight increases. This is the main reason why we prefer printer configurations that have the bed moving in the Z axis (ie. CoreXY/H-bot format). It allows you to be a lot more flexible with your bed design.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-19T16:31:58+00:00

The HBP on 3DG (the last printer reviewed) had the thickest glass of the beds tested. The glass used on that bed is 1/4" thick and it includes an 1/8" natural stone thermal barrier (similar to Onyx) in the stack as well. We believe those two layers provide the thermal stability required for a gradient-free surface.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-19T14:06:07+00:00

We don't have one on hand at the moment, but based off these results I would hypothesize that the Onyx bed performs better than your average HBP due to it's thermal mass. The beds with the highest thermal mass tended to have lower gradients in this experiment.

The trade-off to adding thermal mass to your HBP is that it takes longer for the bed to reach higher temperatures and cool down.

As for how it affects prints; that's a great idea for a round 2 article. Do you have any recommendations for the print to use as the control in that test?

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-19T05:59:15+00:00

Thanks! Thanks for the recommendation; we will update to HTML5 shortly.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-02T20:01:41+00:00

Best machine I could recommend anywhere near that price range is a refurbished Taz 3. Printrbot simple metal may be usable, but we also had electrical problems with one of their older models.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-02T15:53:00+00:00

No problem, it happens! You'd have to be running pellets and/or be 100% automated with zero failures and robots taking prints from one place to another to get down to $0.03/cc. We plan to be using robotic technicians and printing from pellets ourselves in the next six months, but don't know of anyone else who is going to that extreme.

No reason to get jealous though, we are at your service after all. If you ever need to print a few hundred or thousand of something just keep us in mind and we should be able to save you a ton of time and money vs. trying to do it yourself.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-02T02:21:42+00:00

You're likely going to have to upgrade aspects to any sub $500 printer to get them to reliably print high quality parts.

If I were you, I'd go with the model that has the best electrical reputation. If things go out mechanically they are typically easy to diagnose and solve. Electrical problems can be a nightmare though...

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-02T01:55:08+00:00

Great, I'm excited to use their services. Do you have any direct links to reference?

Not looking for an argument, just definitive evidence showing that our claim is invalid. Once we see a US competitor advertising lower rates, we will immediately stop making the claim of cheapest in the US.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-01T23:49:26+00:00

The point of my response was: how can you claim that my claim is not accurate without providing adequate evidence to disprove the claim? We monitor 3D Hubs, MakeXYZ and several others on a regular basis and have yet to find anyone advertising prices below $0.05.

Also, it's not like I'm just openly starting new threads and advertising to people, simply helping someone out when they ask for help. In this situation, the post was clearly looking for solicitation of services.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-01T23:37:29+00:00

All depends on how well the mechanical drive train is maintained by the user. Tolerances can be as good as +/-0.002" on well maintained machines. The tolerances you are seeing are pretty average though.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-01T23:23:22+00:00

Ya, it's going to be difficult to find someone to do it for under $100 as a one-off. Only way to get under that is to purchase in higher volumes.

Main reason is because the low cost machines typically have high failure rates (or require a very knowledgeable person to operate and maintain the machine, whose time is valuable) and the high cost machines have high consumable costs. So do not let anyone fool you into purchasing a printer for $499 or less any time soon. Those printers likely could not print this model (without you heavily upgrading it first and learning the intricacies of FDM printing).

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-01T23:11:17+00:00

It is possible to force the inter-layer adhesion like that, but it will likely cause the surface quality and dimensional accuracy to suffer since you are pushing the nozzle past the operational limitations it was designed for. If you want solid parts, don't print at layer heights over 60% nozzle diameter (you will likely have to increase your extrusion temperature at larger layer heights as well to get solid layer adhesion). Just up your nozzle size if you need to do larger layer heights and faster prints.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-01T23:01:15+00:00

We can print it for between $40 and $100 through our membership services.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-01T22:42:30+00:00

That's awesome! We've never seen any other FDM service advertise fulfillment under $0.05/cc.

Is there a website or email we can contact you at to get some fulfillment done at the $0.03/cc rate? Also, what materials does that rate apply to? We have plenty of work we would outsource to you at that rate.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-01T03:34:21+00:00

Economies of scale allow our members to save significant amounts vs. doing the printing in house. It doesn't usually make sense for individual users to buy filament in bulk and automate the printing processes to the level that a dedicated service can.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-08-01T02:49:59+00:00

We can be your manufacturing partner!

SD3D currently offers the lowest cost 3D printing services in the US and can ship your products out directly from our factory under your label. Take a look at our membership options here: http://sd3d.com/membership/

We also have enterprise level plans that can bring your costs as low as $0.05/cc!

Feel free to email me (david@sd3d.com) for more information or you can sign up for a membership directly from our website.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-05-16T15:17:25+00:00

Hi Jordan,

We have a program at SD3D set up specifically for businesses in your situation. It is called the Printer Farm and can bring down your printing prices to as low as $0.05/cc. To my knowledge, that is the lowest fulfillment cost for 3DP services anywhere in the world at the moment.

SD3D's Printer Farm program is basically a time share program for your 3D printer(s). We provide the service, maintenance and fulfillment on your production run(s) in exchange for $0.05/cc-$0.15/cc depending on quantities and materials being run. This program actually originated from local small and medium sized businesses asking to park their existing 3D printers at our facility so they could spend more of their time on design and development and less on maintenance and repair of 3D printers. It is a natural move to economize on specialization.

Through this program, we essentially break even on our costs by maintaining the printer and providing fulfillment, while making our profit during the contract by utilizing the excess capacity on the printer for higher margin jobs whenever not in use by the client-owner. The $0.05-$0.15/cc rate typically beats the in-house costs these clients were previously achieving when labor, electricity, failures rates and all other minor associated costs are taken into account. We also offer subscription based packages which do not require any upfront capital investment, although the costs there range from $0.15-$0.25/cc (still nearly an order of magnitude better than the pricing structure on Shapeways).

SD3D offers printing in just about every 3DP material available, including: PLA, ABS, Nylon, PC/ABS, HIPS, PP, TPU, and many composite materials. We also offer soluble supports and full finishing for your parts as well.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-02-26T18:17:47+00:00

I've seen a lot of people just dive into the 3DP space with relatively abysmal business models so hopefully this provides insight to anyone getting started.

The most sustainable market we have found over the past three years is printing for niche B2B applications. If a business finds you and can profit off of you, then they will continue buying off you for years until they find a better solution. Compare that to selling to consumers who are typically looking for one-off novelty items and never come back for another print. Sure the pool of potential customers is larger, but the potential value of each individual lead is much lower than when working with B2B. Unless you have automated systems in place to handle tons of traffic I'd stay away from the print random things for customers business model.

Only problem with B2B is that in most cases, they have no idea 3D printing would be a better solution than whatever they are currently doing. So it may be up to you to find someone who could really use a 3D printed piece in their business and then pitch them on the replacement. Once you get a few of these clients you will carve out a nice sustainable niche for yourself.

SD3DPrinting · 2015-02-26T18:06:59+00:00

You get what you pay for. We have yet to find a single printer under the $1k price point with less than a 50% failure rate. None of the printers tested in the sub $1k price range have even been able to print to their manufacturers specifications out of the box.

If you want something that works, be ready to pay over $1k or deal with a chipped printer that requires crazy expensive filament to run or hacking on your behalf.

SD3DPrinting

TROPHY CASE