When a machine pauses or doesn't retract at the ends of the path the plastic will just keep coming resulting in excess buildup thats not part of your design. That pressure causes the plastic to come out a very small nozzle so the forces must be pretty high. There are considerable pressures in that chamber. Was that the video or does Mach3 cause the machine to pause randomly (it seemed to me to be random) all the time during the print?įor those who arn't following why this might be an issue,it is because you are pushing a cold peice of plastic into a hot chamber. I also noticed that the extruder had no retract on motion. I noticed was the extruder paused as well. When looking at streaming video you never know if pausing is from the video or not.
What I couldn't help notice in the video was the pausing. The unit had a triple gear extruder all in plastic. Is that your goup or someone else? They were shots of a printer working on a raft. John Oly, I finally got a chance to take a look at about three videos posted on the other day. If there are any real benefits from CNC techniques, such as 3D tool paths, these can easily be adopted. So I can see this is a method to introduce 3D printing into the existing hobby CNC area, but it is never going to persuade existing Reprappers to start using CNC type kit for 3D printing. I don't need an on screen display for my laser printer, why do I need one for my 3D printer? If I want to see what my printer is doing. I can see the point of visualization for CNC machines, you don't really want to stick your head near to a live CNC, and anyway the workpiece may be obscured by coolant.
If you have spent $1000's on the CNC, an additional $200 for software is not much to worry about.
If you have space for a CNC rig, you have space for an obsolete PC with a parallel port, and a large controller box. The CNC arena is about big, expensive and tried and trusted technology (read : "old"). Obviously though, there is a market in CNC users who want off the shelf 3D printing without leaving their comfort zone. Clearly, the CNC model is a backward step for 3D printing.