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Comment by imtringued | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I'll bite. Can this machine be used to 3D print a part and then switch to a sanding/engraving tool to achieve a nice surface finish? The machine is too "floppy" to do any serious milling but it is good enough for some cosmetic surface operations and depending on your target audience, cosmetics might matter a lot.

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I'm pretty sure this is addressed in both the video and the website. There's a whole section where it shows swapping out various tools at different angles for different functionality, including 3d printing and CNC milling.

But if you looked at their CNC example, the result was pretty dang coarse. Painting on something like XTC-3D from Smooth-On is one way to get a better finish while avoiding tedious sanding.

Hi, I am the developer of the Machine. It is a bad machining. But not because the machine. I don't have a good 4 axis paid cam software. So, I developed a software myself to generate 4 axis milling. Obviously it has a bug and it wasn't possible to generate a finish work.

After I release mechanical design v1, I will work on the codes and hopefully will be able to demonstrate a clean finish work.

It wouldn't be easy to secure a printed part, especially without adding slop. Also, is there any overlap between materials you can 3d print with in this thing, and ones you can mill (or even polish) without shattering the part?

Maybe? Not all plastic plays nice with machining, but E3D demoed mixing additive and subtractive manufacturing with their tool changer setup, which is a much more rigid Cartesian system.

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