Boy am I reviving an old thread...
Still don't have a 3D printer here myself, but I caught wind of this company and their industrial 3D Printer through a 3D printer/scanner consulting company I follow just the other day:
The company's Impossible-Objects
https://www.impossible-objects.com/https://www.youtube.com/@impossible-objectsThey've a process built toward higher end printing, and HIGH VOLUME printing.
Basically:
- They print ink on non-woven composite fibre gauze sheets, off a roll, quite like a conventional paper printing press.
- Plastic powder is layered on thin, like SLS printing, it sticks to the ink wetted parts, and they vaccum off the rest of the layer.
- Each of the sheets is one layer of the part.
- These sheets are stacked up, and when the layers are complete, the stack is pressed down to size in the Z direction, and the stack is heated above the plastic powder's melting point.
Because it's fused, all layers at once, there aren't the warping/internal stress issues like other processes. The rest of the non-woven sheeting that wasn't printed, in effect, acts as sacrificial support.
They note on the website, that they either "mechanically or chemically" remove the unused fibreglass or CF sheeting, and voila, you have your finished part. While all the videos I found, they mention sandblasting as the mechanical process, they don't mention the chemical options.
Tech specs I dug up... for their CBAM-25 printer they just announced:
- Prints at up to 11L per hour of volume. The company curbs that back to a production steady 2.9L/hr with downtime for maintenance and switching out consumables
- Even at just 2900 cm^3/hr, the process is around 15x faster than the fastest SLS printers
- The printer is 20 x 5 x 5 ft. It reminds me, by the way it works, more like a high volume/high speed printing press in layout and size.
- Runs on 220V, so not even needing three phase, like you'd expect with a large industrial machine about the size of a car
- Right now they only offer two fibre media and two plastics, so a total of 4 composite combinations
No mention of cost on their site, brochures, so like ... Creaform and 3D scanners, this is gonna be a large company 5-6-7 figures purchase, not a remortgage the house and HELOC a maker garage sorta deal. They're courting electronics companies, aerospace, defence, and automotive suppliers as customers, so this is an early stage of announcement/availability.
My take, from the various manufacturing and other jobs I've taken over the years:
- The machinery they use reminds me of the printing presses and other machinery used to press/cut/fold/collate. Paper and ink in one end, bound and cut magazines out the other end, into a stacker, automagically stacked, and the worker shoves the stacks into boxes and packs them up to the customer.
- The process is a jump outside the box, and sure seems like it's scaleable, and likely with enough orders or funding, one or more of their customers will offer the one-off or small batch services like Shapeways/JLPCB do for 3d printing.
- The build volume is a little ... short in the Z dimension. I realize that sounds like I'm complaining about a short dick, but ... 4 inches IS a little inadequate, no?
My hopes are that they're wildly successful.
Since it's unlikely in the short term that there'll be a DIY sort of solution, given patents, scale, and the higher cost of consumables (rolls of woven composites, sized plastic powders) I hope that the ability to scan/generate/design a part and get it printed out and mailed to you is a possibility.
It couples with 3D scanning and organic/iterative design of shapes near perfectly. I'll be showing this to my bro-in-law that runs the machine shop, to see what his reaction would be to that. I know this is outside the scope of what they do, as a machine shop, but I know he's open to the idea of expanding business/offerings. If he had enough demand for "you can't machine that part", maybe he could justify the big expenditure to cover parts offered by his shop?
Weazzy, what's your take with this, and ... ITAR? Could my hopes and dreams get dashed by the potential "weapons grade" capabilities of this being a general print-as-a-service offering?