25 Apr
2012
25 Apr
'12
12:33 p.m.
Adrian Stoness wrote:
kit one u can buy cost like 8k after shiping duties
and options can be
finiky already had the head melt down twice on it
http://www.flickr.com/photos/assentworks/6110256050/in/photostream/lightbox/
Kits
vary considerably in capabilities and quality, and of course the
quality is also affected by the skill of the person assembly the kit.
There are sub-$2500 kits that can produce fairly decent output, though
generally not comparable to the commercial printers.
for making parts that can handle were one needs access to a pritty
expensive unit... talking 100k plus
No, there are commercial ones in the $25K range
that produce
high-quality ABS parts. The problem isn't the cost of the printer, but
rather, the cost of the materials. They do the same things that some
inkjet printer vendors do (or used to do) to keep you from refilling the
printer cartridges.
For example, each cartridge has a chip with a unique ID and a record of
how much material is believed to be in the cartridge. The printer
updates that record, and will not use the cartridge if it thinks it
should be empty. That wouldn't be too difficult to circumvent, except
that the printer also maintains an internal database of all of the
cartridges it has used, and how much material it thinks should be
present in them.