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HYREL 3-D Printers Were Developed by 3-D Printer Users (Video)
HYREL 3-D had a display Timothy spotted at last month's Maker Faire Atlanta. They're not trying to hustle Kickstarter donors; they exceeded their $50,000 goal by over $100,000. Their main pitch was (and still is) that they are making high-reliability 3-D printers that can run many hours without breaking. Project spokesperson Daniel Hutchison says he and other people he knows who were making prototypes and short-run parts in the Atlanta area were continually disappointed by the poor reliability of available 3-D printers, which is why they decided to make their own. Open Source? Somewhat, partially, kind of... but they have a bunch of proprietary secret sauce in their software, too. Daniel goes into this in more detail in the video, so there's no need for us to repeat his words when you can hear them (or read them in the transcript) for yourself. (Alternate Video Link)
It seems their idea of reliability is mainly based on the lifetime of the machine, which I get, but the real reliability problem with FDM printers isn't machine longevity, but the ability to start a print and know it will finish. My machine is built using 8020 frame- no laser cut plywood, and no 3D printed parts in the structure of the machine. I have been working to eliminate reliability problems from the beginning because I want to print full size human skulls from CT scans. Such prints take anywhere from 24-48 hours. The extruder has been the #1 reliability problem- it usually has some problem about 15 hours or so into the print. I've also had some problems with filament tangling on the spool. Slicing software has problems that occur with some STL files and not others.
CAN buses are nice, but I'm not sure that does much unless youre setting up a shop with 20 machines on a network. Show me an extruder than can run without fail for 48 hours at a time and I'll throw some money at it.