where to buy nice 3d printers?

my shop and i have no experience with 3D printing, but i think it could really help us on a silly family of parts we make. the parts are metal and very different sizes, but thats not really a concern at the moment. but where would a shop buy good metal 3D printers? we would not want a hobbyist machine, would be nice if it was geared more towards a real shop.

i really dont want to get into the parts or requirements. just places to buy them and any experience you have buying and using.

RoboMiller said:

my shop and i have no experience with 3D printing, but i think it could really help us on a silly family of parts we make. the parts are metal and very different sizes, but thats not really a concern at the moment. but where would a shop buy good metal 3D printers? we would not want a hobbyist machine, would be nice if it was geared more towards a real shop.

i really dont want to get into the parts or requirements. just places to buy them and any experience you have buying and using.

Click to expand...

Without a requirement its tough to suggest.

Hi RoboMiller:
Are you aware of the price for "good" metal 3D printers?
I priced out an EOS machine about a year ago...just north of 3/4 of a million dollars US (and that was the little one)
There are no hobby grade 3D metal printers so far as I know.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining
www.clarusmicrotech.com

A friend of mine took a tour of the MN based company that makes them just last week. He said it was amazing.

Professional 3D Printing | Stratasys

Richard King said:

A friend of mine took a tour of the MN based company that makes them just last week. He said it was amazing.

Professional 3D Printing | Stratasys

Click to expand...

I could be wrong, but I don't believe stratasys does any metal printing? It's not listed under "Materials" on their website.

I'm with implmex: you can find equipment via Google search but it's $$$

IMO Give it a few years (maybe even decades? CNC took 30-40 years to become a viable option for most shops). Let the government contractors and university labs do their thing and by the time the price drops, It might actually be a dependable manufacturing option.

Stratasys doesn't make 3D metal printers. The price of 3D printers that can do metal is pretty high. If you're actually in the market for a machine that is around $1M minimum you may want to do some more research. Hopefully the price on them will come down soon but the current technology for metal printing hasn't changed vastly in the recent past.

Terry Wohlers provides the best guide to various 3D printing options.

implmex said:

Hi RoboMiller:
Are you aware of the price for "good" metal 3D printers?
I priced out an EOS machine about a year ago...just north of 3/4 of a million dollars US (and that was the little one)
There are no hobby grade 3D metal printers so far as I know.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining
Clarus Microtech

Click to expand...

i am not aware of the price of good metal 3d printers....so near $1million aint gonna work haha i suppose that means there will always be a need for fully machined components in my work life time, and im fine with that haha

RoboMiller said:

i am not aware of the price of good metal 3d printers....so near $1million aint gonna work haha i suppose that means there will always be a need for fully machined components in my work life time, and im fine with that haha

Click to expand...

For now.

A large factor in the price structure is patent control. Supply and Demand is bound during the life of patents if the patent holder is not as free with their licensing and wants to use their supply-control to elevate prices. The opposite is Elon Musk who tossed all his patents on electrical systems for his car, including recharging, into an open source for anyone to use without licensing fees and such. Additive mfr machinery has no such benefactors.

Anyways... as some of the patents come to their natural expiration, competition will enter and prices will fall. It's happened for after every major/significant plastic-related patent expired for those types of machines.

JNieman said:

For now.

A large factor in the price structure is patent control. Supply and Demand is bound during the life of patents if the patent holder is not as free with their licensing and wants to use their supply-control to elevate prices. The opposite is Elon Musk who tossed all his patents on electrical systems for his car, including recharging, into an open source for anyone to use without licensing fees and such. Additive mfr machinery has no such benefactors.

Anyways... as some of the patents come to their natural expiration, competition will enter and prices will fall. It's happened for after every major/significant plastic-related patent expired for those types of machines.

Click to expand...

Actually most of the patents for 3D printing technology have already expired. It's the complexity of doing what the machines need to do that is driving the cost. That's why hobby 3D printing machines that print PLA or ABS are so cheap and quite capable.

Sintering is still expensive to implement, particularly in scale. It's taken about 8 years from the expiration of the first patents for FDM to get as far as they have at this point. The bulk of the reason it was able get to where it is today is that the process has a low barrier of entry which makes it accessible to more people. SLA is somewhat less accessible though still attainable by some but sintering is a whole different game. It's a lot easier to shoot melted plastic out of a nozzle than to melt aluminum power together with a laser. Even when the patents expire it's not going to be a process that has a low barrier to entry though there will be more traditional manufacturing players entering the sintering game. Having an FDM or SLA printer in your house is more like having a CNC router while having an SLS machine is more like having a waterjet.

I really like our uPrint SE plus but I do wish the price of materials would come down for this workhorse FDM printer. We are starting to print more biomedical models and we might well end up spending more on materials overall if they were cheaper per model. The support material is key for bio models. I'm currently printing a chordoma, a cancer in the first vertebra below the skull where the cancer has completely eaten away the bone. In the CT they used contrast agent in blood so in the segmentation, all the arteries came up with the bone. We cut the front of the skull off in Geomagic Freeform as well as adding a flat base so the arteries can hold up the rest of the skull like the trunks of a banyan tree. We're going to try it on a Makerbot too as and possibly publish a little note on the comparison but I'm sure the makerbot will have major problems with the overhang.

We have a Stratasys Objet 30 in the 3D printing game this is considered to be a low end machine (about $40,000) it only shoots one compound in either black or white and the compounds are expensive and have a short shelf life, but it is dead accurate and gives excellent detail on the smallest of parts. Its a good prototyping machine but I would not use it for over the counter parts ever. To me it falls into the nice category hence the post. Good 3D machines under a given price point will not be around for a while yet.

The Objet is a low end photopolymer machine but compared to a deposition process machine it's higher end. The Objet isn't a machine like you see with consumer/prosumer printers, for example a Makerbot. You can get a good FDM/FFF machine for under $5k. A big application for the Objets are realistic mockups of finished consumer products. The value in the Objet is the integration of the hardware/software/material. You should be able to do about a dozen material types/color combos with a model 30. They are going to have lower cost competition near term as most of the patents that covered many of the photopolymer processes have recently expired. One of the reasons the Objet was able to maintain price was patent lock in.

Several well funded players are looking to capture the lower end market. Lower cost, higher quality photopolymer machines have started to appear in the last year or so. The build envelopes are small and the material limited in the non Stratasys machines but the print quality is good. The software/hardware/material integration isn't there yet like on an Objet but people like Autodesk are working on that. If the curve is similar to what happened with the FDM/FFF process I'd expect that within the next 18-24 months the capabilites of the now $40k Objet will be available in a $15-20k machine from established players. Material still won't be cheap but it should be less expensive than it is now once the market opens up and probably a greater variety. Even more people are working on materials than machines. There is a big push by Stratasys right now to enforce DMCA copyright protections to lock you into using their materials in their machines. They see change coming in that part of the market. They blew it in the FDM/FFF consumer/prosumer world with buying Makerbot. They may make the same mistake as photopolymer machines become more widely adapted giving someone else an opportunity.

This is a little late - just saw the post - and it's not really viable for prime-time yet but just in case it is helpful...
There's a guy at Michigan Tech (I believe) who has put together a 3D metal printer using a MIG welder and an open source 3D printer gantry (rep-rap style). Initial prints weren't all too detailed but would definitely be useable for some applications, especially if finish machining was an option. Just google "Joshua Pierce" with 3D MIG metal printer.

Here's a list of the top 10 The Best 3D Printers of 2015 | Top Ten Reviews If you're looking for something a little bigger I don't have any recommendations. I was looking at these small ones just last week

David Hansen said:

Here's a list of the top 10 The Best 3D Printers of 2015 | Top Ten Reviews If you're looking for something a little bigger I don't have any recommendations. I was looking at these small ones just last week

Click to expand...

Looks like those are all FDM printers intended for use with plastics. The OP was looking for metal printing.

Just saw this the other day (on Autodesk CAM forum/General Discussion) and not quite sure what to think about it....

Aurora Labs

If you go to the 'SHOP' part of the website the units are listed for $32,000.00 to $45,000.00 Australian dollars.

Fred

Keep in mind that there is more than one way to skin a cat! If you want "metal" parts you have to then ask why do they need to be metal? What function does the metal provide, is is aesthetic (ie for a prototype) or is it strength? FFF and other inexpensive 3D printing technology may be of use to get you to the destination goal, but indirectly. So for example if it's simple aesthetic you may be able to paint the part with metal based paints, including iron based that can be made to rust. They can be left as such or used as as a form for electroforming to build a metal shell that will be aesthetically convincing.

Other indirect routes might be to use the print as a pattern to cast the desired metal. That's possible through using the lost PLA process and an investment in the same way lost wax or similar casting might be used. Alternatively use it as a conventional pattern in a flask.

There are probably other indirect methods to get to a "metal" print that don't come to mind right now, but the point being that this is all quite a new area, at least in terms of coming up with new applications, so there is still plenty of scope to use one's imagination in seeing how quite inexpensive printers may be of use in manufacturing by means we haven't yet thought of.

But, as stated by others, if you're after a "cheap" direct laser sintering metal printer I'd suggest you're SOL! The basic technology is now well within the realms of the hacker/enthusiast and I think we'll start to see open source machines coming out within the next 5 years (an eternity in this field at the moment). The lasers are cheap, and the motion control a bit of a no brainer these days. However the cost to run the machines is horrendous; the powder is expensive, and you'd need to consider the cost of argon in the build chamber. Until the cost of the powder becomes more affordable, I can't see there being too much interest in this field from the open source community, especially when so much progress is being made in other areas, but I have no doubt it will eventually come.