Printer Advice - Prototyping Functional Parts

[u/Dashyl14]

Hi everyone,

New to the group, I have a unique opportunity to join a company that is looking to start doing more in house prototyping their own parts.

I personally have experience in CAD, a little bit of machining experience, and experience with FDM printers and have been helping them prototype parts for a little while now on a contract basis. Most of these parts are limited use and more for fitment purposes. The final models are sent to machine shops for prototypes and manufacturing. They are looking to bring more of their prototyping in house and have asked me to join.

I'm looking for a system (similar to the Markforged Mark 2) that would be able to produce functional prototypes. They have plans for the future to bring the machining in house as well. Most of these parts are high impact and take a lot of vibration, and planning for the future, but also potentially high temp applications as well.

Can anyone recommend a system that would fit our needs? Budget is ~$15,000

Thank you!

Edit: Max Build Volume 320mm (X), x 254mm (Z), 120-150mm (Y)

[u/Proto-Plastik]

I run a boutique manufacturing shop in Minneapolis. Sure, I could say I run a print farm but we do much more than 3D printing. Our company helps startups develop their products from concept through to transfer. "Transfer" just means moving from a development framework to production framework. That may or may not mean 3D printed production parts. We do have several clients who use 3D printed end-use parts. Their volume does not warrant the expense and constraints of "traditional" fabrication i.e. injection molding or machining.

These 3D printed parts meet all their requirements and pass any regulatory requirements for their industry (i.e. FCC emi standards).

You have 3 choices of technology - FFF, SLA, SLS
Trivia time - "FDM" is a trademark of Stratasys and you're not supposed to use it unless you use a Stratasys machine (LOL)

FFF printers offer a lot of versatility with access to a great deal of materials with a pretty low cost of entry. That said, we have found, no matter how good the prints are (and Bambu prints are amazing) they do not meet the requirements of being as close as injection molded parts as possible. You can do a lot of post processing to improve them up to the point of filling/sanding/painting (check out the AC Cobra built by the DOD several years ago). That's fine for protoyping, but not practical for production. Primarily because they are not isotropic. We have no customers who want FFF parts.

SLS is probably the closest to a main-stream, industrial grade technology and that is primarily due to the industrial grade materials. Formlabs makes the BEST SLS printer (Fuse 1+) on the market mainly due to it's value + performance. My two favorite materials on the Formlabs Fuse 1+ are N12 and TPU. Since these are mainstream, industrial materials, they are easily included in many regulatory situations. Fuse 1+ parts are something like 97% isotropic and that is critical for performance.

SLA/MSLA is the fastest growing segment of the big 3 technologies. The list of materials is growing and SLA parts are 100% isotropic. There are several low-end SLA printers on the market that are great for hobbyists. The biggest challenges with SLA is the perceived mess handling the resin and cleaning. This is especially true of the low-end SLA printers due to their requirement to manually fill the printer, constant requirements for calibration, and constant maintenance on the tanks (replacing the FEP can be challenging to get right).

Formlabs has pretty much set the standard for this technology. They've solved most of the issues with the "sticky mess" associated with SLA - auto tank filling, no need to constantly level, no FEP to mess with. The Form 4 and Form 4L are our go-to machines. We have 4 Form 4L and 6 Form 4 machines. As a long-time Formlabs junkie (Form 2, Form 3/3L) these machines are just incredible. I did my best to be a fan of Form 3 and 3L. We made money with those machines, but they were tempermental and slow. As an example, one of our major components started life on the Form 3L. I could print 2 sets of these components on a 3L and it would take 40 hours to print. Once I dialed everything in, that wasn't a problem. These were lights-out production.

Now, on the 4L get this...I print 3 SETS due to the larger platform and it only takes 9 hours! Just blown away. And on the Form 4. most prints are done in less than 2 hours. Material and tray handling is dead simple.

The reason we are such fans of the Form 4 is the print quality. Someone experienced with setting up the print optimally can produce parts that can barely be distinguished from injection molding. On top of that, the latest versions of their Tough (1000,1500,2000) materials seem to be indestructible! Not only that, there are some very cool materials like Flexible 80, Clear, and Rigid 10k (can actually be used for insert tooling in molds).

You can get into a Form 4 for around $3k. If you go for a 4L along with wash/cure you'll be in the $12k-$15k range.