Year 3 ID student Katherine Kawecki has had the Ultimaker printer to play around with over the Christmas break. She offers her advice, tips and reflections on wrestling with the Ultimaker into shape. A great read and useful resources! Well done Katherine.
Ultimaker Analysis Report (4).pdf
After a fews weeks of waiting the final prints from Shapeways have arrived. Using three different printing technology illustrated bellow from left to right: FDM (Up Plus 2), SLA (Form 1) EBM – Electronic Beam Melting (Shapeways) I was able to conceptualise and finalise the design, each process offering different qualities. The FDM process producing excellent quality however needed support structures to form model, resulting in areas being filled in with irremovable supports. SLA process worked extremely well producing quality similar to FDM process with no support structures needed to form the piece, proving to be a better option in printing small intricate works. Finally, EBM – Electronic Beam Melting, whilst Shapeways employ numerous printing technology’s, I’m assuming to create the piece in ‘Polished Gold Steel ‘Enrobed in 24k gold’ this technology would have been employed due to the nature of the technology being able to print without support structures and in various metals; will have to follow up and check. The final piece came out better than expected without any printing problems, Shapeways proving to be an excellent printing service excelling in both quality and service.
The overall product and software of the Form 1 is a very impressive package. The printer itself is beautifully detailed and proportioned form, in addition to its clean and intuitive layout for ease of use. Likewise, the software is equally well formed and a delight to use, espically compared to the clunky and buggy UP+ printer software. The Form 1 development team obviously have a talented design team who understand the value of creating a good user experience. This is an outstanding achievement, give that this is the first production model of the Form 1 and the first low-cost stereolithography machine on the market. Again a credit to the team behind its development.
The form 1 has a default resolution of 0.05mm! An extraordinary fine tolerance which promises ‘step’ free surfaces as usually accepted with the filament based printers that we have been testing over the last few years. The less than ideal aspects of this printer are the finishing kit and post print processing. Removing the support material can be tedious and time consuming, as well as using, proportionally, a fair bit of the expensive resin. The clear resin that comes with the product has thankfully a low VOC with slight almond scent, and sets clear with a slight flex. However, parts soon yellow and harden when exposed to sunlight.
Initial test prints included the Eiffel Tower to see how the lattice structured would render and a Bracelet to see how organic forms render.
Received a sample print yesterday from Makerbot in advertising their Replicator 2 machines, impressive detail for the specifications of the print.
Recently i’ve taken up a job to design some cufflinks for a client in which a logo need to be translated into a 3D form and made into a cufflink. The final work/model has been sent off to a printing service called ‘Shapeways’ facilitating a printing service in a range of materials. In this case the cufflinks are to be printed in a Polished Gold Steel ‘Enrobed in 24k gold and polished to a mild sheen with visible print lines’ The job will take will take around 4 weeks to complete, 2 weeks for the job and another 2 for postage. The job will be great illustration of the quality and precision that can achieve with service. Post will be updated with more pictures and evaluation on the finished model when print job has been received.
Low-cost 3D Printing 