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HYREL 3-D Printers Were Developed by 3-D Printer Users (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the we-aren't-going-to-excited-by-a-printer-again-until-we-see-a-4d-one dept.

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)

4 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I Want by crioca · · Score: 2

    Those exist, they're called Repraps. http://reprap.org/

  2. Re:But but but by GrpA · · Score: 2

    Depending on your perspective and use, 3D printers can pay for themselves in a single day, and if you use Shapeways as your yardstick, they can pay for themselves with as little as a single roll of plastic ( Sub $1000 printer + 1 Kg of plastic vs $1 per gram standard post-print charge )

    I use an UP Mini - I've reliably put about 15 to 20 Kg of plastic through it already, and it's still working... It did start to fail once, so I put some silicon grease on the linear bearings and all was good. One day I'll get the next model, but this one has paid for itself 15 times over in about 2 years, and people buy entire arrays of Up Mini's to run as limited production - they are very reliable and rarely fail to print correctly. It's been about 4Kg since I had my last misprint...

    GrpA

    --
    Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
  3. Cartesian? Na mate, not reliable. by thatkid_2002 · · Score: 2

    A cartesian (like RepRap Mendel or this HYREL) based design always rattles itself apart and has very high stress on parts which increases as print speed increases. A SCARA (RepRap Morgan) or Delta (RepRap Rostock) have far lower stresses involved and shock from head movement is shared among multiple axis which decreases resistance/absorption problems and allows for higher print speeds.

    They go on about design, and yet they failed to analyze what was the root cause of the faiures and opted to apply bandaids instead.

  4. There's reliability and then there's reliability. by mark_reh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.