But where is the innovation? Where are the alternatives?
Is there simply not enough money in cheap 3D printing to justify investment?
But where is the innovation? Where are the alternatives?
Is there simply not enough money in cheap 3D printing to justify investment?
* One problem is rigidity/vibration. This is solved by lots of rigid mass, which isn't consumer friendly. It makes for a big, heavy, expensive machine.
* Another problem is the lack of feedback. This is solved by having accurate sensing of positioning. This costs money.
* Another problem is temperature management. This requires an enclosure and parts that don't mind the heat. This takes space and costs money.
* Another problem is extrusion consistency. This either requires very accurately manufactured plastic as an input, or excellent sensing of what's going into the extruder. This also costs money.
And most of these are polish on top. Like you can drop $700 on a very decent printer, or you could spend $5000 on one that mostly does the same thing, except is less fiddly because it's got a lot more steel and sensors in it. That makes sense if you're running a business, not so much if you rarely want to make stuff out of plastic.
Some of these are being slowly addressed in quite unorthodox ways. Eg, some sensing issues are being addressed with fancy motor drivers that can tell when the motor has gotten stuck.
There's also that resin gets way better precision and fixes many of these issues for way cheaper. It's got its own downsides of course, but it does mean that the amount of people who really need a very solid FDM printer is smaller than you might think.
For art pieces I often print using a mixture of the two then join them together, such as a bust with the head, I’ll make the head in resin and the body in FDM.
The printers are dead simple to use too compared to all the hassle of FDM printing. Very few moving parts means very few opportunities for the myriad mistakes that seem inherent in FDM printing.
The results can be nice, but they may not be the best choice for many users.
Your immune system starts recognizing it as a foreign body and suddenly you develop an allergy against the resin which can result in quite severe symptoms.
I don't own a 3D printer, but I wonder why pellet extruders are not a standard for feeding these FDM machines. This apparent lack of interest has an effect on the price of the excessively overpriced and seemingly amateurish pellet extruders that seem to exist at the moment (of which there seem to be only two or three models?).
We are talking about a significant price difference in the cost of consumables in pellet form, humidity of the material and mixing control, and the ability to reuse material from failed prints or everyday items, among the first things that cross my mind.
it's been like this for nearly a decade as you said, and the common extruder usually doesn't even include an acceleration sensor.
With Voron/Bambu lab/Prusa XL, the next-gen is arriving right now. Let's see...