[OPLINLIST] 3D Printer

[Clint Michael Parry]

We were able to borrow the Cube 3 for a trail program, but you can only use plastic sourced from Cubify, and as a machine it costs about 800% more to run than others on the market. Print quality is generally very good, but the filament costs $50 for 300 grams, as opposed to open filament which costs about $20 for 1000 grams. Not a good value. Also, the $50 cartridges tend to jam (all 6 cartridges I used jammed or outright broke), meaning you have to take them apart to repair or send them in if you aren’t up to the task yourself. The cartridges also have a “Smart” sensor that tells the machine how much plastic is on the spool, but it is always wrong. I had at least 10% of each spool left on each cartridge, though the machine said that they were “empty” and would not print unless I changed to a cartridge that didn’t think it was empty.

We’re very glad we didn’t buy a Cube 3.

The local community college where my wife works has a Replicator 2, and that machine has had a lot of downtime. Support and service is good, but the extruder has to be repaired or replaced frequently in her experience.

At our library we recently got a Polar3D printer from a Cincinnati based startup. Their educational pricing is $600 (and libraries apply), regular retail pricing is $800.

The machine has a bit of a learning curve, especially if you have used a 3D printer before, as it uses a little different logic from most other 3D printers, but the support is excellent with an active community and the programmers often responding with tips or fixes directly.

We have been running the machine for about 2 months and have made over 100 objects with it so far and have had ZERO downtime. The extruder is designed to be easily cleaned out without having to send it in for repairs, the machine has only 4 moving parts and no belts to wear out.

It can print objects with an 8 inch diameter by 6 inch height. 

It has a built in webcam and takes time lapses of every print. This wasn’t a dealmaker for us, but it is a neat feature. You can even watch it from offsite (though we can’t put a live feed on our website yet.) You can even control the printer over the internet. I have paused it and started a print from 50 miles away.

I know I’m sounding like a shill for the company, but since I saw it at MakerFaire in Detroit over the summer, it seemed like a good quality printer at an entry level price point and we have been happy with it so far.

Negative things about this printer: 
It does have a lot of fine tuning settings available, but temperature adjustments (necessary for specialty plastics) are hard to implement.
You use Aquanet hairspray for adhesive (common for some other printers as well) which isn’t really an issue, but you do need copious amounts of it to get objects to stick.
Objects can warp slightly if you place them too close to the center of the buildplate (a firmware update largely fixed this)
There is no support for printing from a Flash Drive (the printer is meant to be accessed from a tablet, phone, or computer over the internet and does not have an interface on the machine)
If the Internet is down, you can print locally to the machine, the Polar3D creates its own WiFi hotspot that any computer, phone, or tablet can connect to, but the features are severely limited in this mode.

I’d be happy to talk to anyone about our 3D printing experiences at our library. We’re a small library (7 employees serving a community of 3,000) and have had a very good response from our 3D printer so far.

Clint Parry
IT Manager
Delta Public Library
cparry at deltapubliclibrary.org

Sent from Mail for Windows 10



From: Amanda Henning
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2015 12:26 PM
To: oplinlist at lists.oplin.org
Subject: [OPLINLIST] 3D Printer


Has anybody had a really great experience with a specific brand of 3D printer for library programming?  We have a flexible (but not enormous) budget, and are looking for something that is easy to use and dependable.
thanks!


-- 
Amanda Henning
Teen Services Librarian
Delaware Branch of the Delaware County District Library
84 E. Winter St.
Delaware, OH  43015
(740) 362-3861
ahenning at delawarelibrary.org


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