Hi Guys,
I have personally been tracking the MF technology for the past 2 years. We has some samples of a clip that we were trying to reproduce in nylon and the results were less than impressive on the intricate details we had designed for molding. We passed at the time, but fast forward another year and a half and I came across this printer on the good ol internet flea market. I purchased it to finally get to the bottom of its limitations and to do some rather etreme testing of the components in suspension and engine components (pulley and similar mounting) Just thought I would post up as I am sure many people are interested in a real world review. I know a lot of aerospace companies that have purchased them but I have not gotten much feedback, as if they just got them on a budget windfall. Almost no consumer reivews on youtube, I will fix that with a video series. Link to follow once I get the first video up.
First observations:
-intial setup was easy, easy to load material and dial in print head height.
-Eiger (the print slicer and studio) is pretty easy to use, but I wish it had a more advanced mode to be more selective on the fiber geometry as well as allow post simulation. Currently its an educated guess as to how stiff or strong something will be. Trial an error should not be build into the process, it should be able to export to a parasolid with various bodies based on material properties. Since MF controls the materials, you do get cost estimates build in, that is nice for ROI and material conservation.
-Pure nylon has some serious limitations and MF has pretty much abandoned it as a primary material. The new ONYX material is much more stable but I will find out when I get there. Nylon absorbs water and that makes its shelf life short without a nice helping of dessicant. Good thing we are in CO. The nylon leaves a lot of hairs ssimilar to a hot glue gun, trails and bubbles.
-First print was a taper stud with threads modeled, printed flat. overall results were OK but as I found in our sample pring long ago, the support bonds all too well to the model making it a cut and fine tune extraction. 5/8-18 threads were pretty good but the M14-1.5 were very undersized. Assuming this is due to the peaks fo the threads missing.
-The second print was the same stud but vertical. About 1/3 of the way through I stopped it because the support was inadequate and the stud was doing a hula dance on each print.
-3rd and 4th attempts were our first fresh designs for a pulley bracket. And the prints failed but didn't fail. The print head got stuck, but the control just kinda timed out, cooled the heads down and just stated that the print head had a heater timeout. Bottom line I think that nylon had accumulated on the print head and on a more detailed area of the model, the nylon cooled on the print head and stuck it to the model. I took at nice cap of nylon off the print head and it printed the next round.
The part that came off has several layers of fiberglas reinforcement and it does feel quite stong. I plan on doing more metal embedding, hybridizing with sheetmetal and aiming for structural functional parts. But this is what I have for now. I don't come on the forum too often, but might more to deliver feedback.
I have personally been tracking the MF technology for the past 2 years. We has some samples of a clip that we were trying to reproduce in nylon and the results were less than impressive on the intricate details we had designed for molding. We passed at the time, but fast forward another year and a half and I came across this printer on the good ol internet flea market. I purchased it to finally get to the bottom of its limitations and to do some rather etreme testing of the components in suspension and engine components (pulley and similar mounting) Just thought I would post up as I am sure many people are interested in a real world review. I know a lot of aerospace companies that have purchased them but I have not gotten much feedback, as if they just got them on a budget windfall. Almost no consumer reivews on youtube, I will fix that with a video series. Link to follow once I get the first video up.
First observations:
-intial setup was easy, easy to load material and dial in print head height.
-Eiger (the print slicer and studio) is pretty easy to use, but I wish it had a more advanced mode to be more selective on the fiber geometry as well as allow post simulation. Currently its an educated guess as to how stiff or strong something will be. Trial an error should not be build into the process, it should be able to export to a parasolid with various bodies based on material properties. Since MF controls the materials, you do get cost estimates build in, that is nice for ROI and material conservation.
-Pure nylon has some serious limitations and MF has pretty much abandoned it as a primary material. The new ONYX material is much more stable but I will find out when I get there. Nylon absorbs water and that makes its shelf life short without a nice helping of dessicant. Good thing we are in CO. The nylon leaves a lot of hairs ssimilar to a hot glue gun, trails and bubbles.
-First print was a taper stud with threads modeled, printed flat. overall results were OK but as I found in our sample pring long ago, the support bonds all too well to the model making it a cut and fine tune extraction. 5/8-18 threads were pretty good but the M14-1.5 were very undersized. Assuming this is due to the peaks fo the threads missing.
-The second print was the same stud but vertical. About 1/3 of the way through I stopped it because the support was inadequate and the stud was doing a hula dance on each print.
-3rd and 4th attempts were our first fresh designs for a pulley bracket. And the prints failed but didn't fail. The print head got stuck, but the control just kinda timed out, cooled the heads down and just stated that the print head had a heater timeout. Bottom line I think that nylon had accumulated on the print head and on a more detailed area of the model, the nylon cooled on the print head and stuck it to the model. I took at nice cap of nylon off the print head and it printed the next round.
The part that came off has several layers of fiberglas reinforcement and it does feel quite stong. I plan on doing more metal embedding, hybridizing with sheetmetal and aiming for structural functional parts. But this is what I have for now. I don't come on the forum too often, but might more to deliver feedback.