Hi everybody,
I just registered to the forum and I would like to have some advice concerning 3d printers.Considering that I live in Milan and here there are valid labs that provide printing service / fusion jewelry, it is some time I’m taking information in order to buy a printer: I went recently to Vicenzaoro fair and a couple of products have attracted my attention, as well as a model that I found online that looks great for quality and price. I don’ t want to buy a machine too cheap since I need detailed requirements (I want to print the pieces of the designs of my clients who are 90% jewelry), but at the same time the machine can’t be too expensive for budget limits
The machines I’m thinking to are the following :
3DL PRINTER - HD 2.0 ROBOTFACTORY (I’m trying it beside one laboratory close to Milan : I think that this is a machine with a great potential, but I still have to know it better and fully understand the parameters that endeavors)
B9 CREATOR V 1.2
DWS 009J
If anyone knows and wants to give me his opinion, that would be of great help. Thanks to everyone in advance
I’m goldsmith and jeweler as well and have some questions that might clear your needs a bit and can share my experience.
What would you like to get as end product? A prototype to show to your clients before you produce it in gold? or the end product in gold or other precious metals? What do you consider “expensive”, what is your dream price really in numbers?
I personally am very happy with my Form2, but slowly but surely the conumables prices get higher for the next generations of Form3,just a bit like nespresso… every print gets more expensive. …and the machines are absolutely not repairable by yourself, you got no access to anything but fluffy menus…
BUT I always appreciated that this is a solution that works extremely reliable with no ( I mean NO) calibration time and when you work with it at a daily basis, you don’t want to loose much time for every print. I had worked for a long time with Solidscapes, these take sooo much maintainance time, you can hire one person just to make them work every day.
For production there is sadly no alternative to the ProJet, if we are speaking about best quality, but as single person you will probably never be able to use its full capacity, that’s why usually just casting enterprises have them.
For a professional enviroment where the printer is part of a larger workflow and its not a hobby where you want to build / fiddle etc with the printers…
SLA: Formlabs (we’re also running a Peoply Phenom L but quality not close to Form2/3)
FDM: Ultimaker
Yeah - formlabs is a closed in system that’s terrible to work with. Quality is amazing, but their design decisions (like the cartridge chip) are frustrating.
Ultimaker printers we’ve hardly had to touch and they’ve been churning out prints for years.
EOS Precious M080 was designed and optimized for the jewelry industry… Wide range of precious metal powder alloys can be used, such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium alloys, wire, sheet, tubing, coin blanks and casting grain. price: $100,000 - $250,000. source: https://www.aniwaa.com/product/3d-printers/eos-precious-m-080/
RELATED TOPIC: Swedish firm Arcam makes electron beam machines which print variety of strong alloys with +/– 0.4 mm accuracy. GE bought Arcam in 2016 and made this short video about Arcam machines: Transformative technology—Electron Beam Melting (EBM) - YouTube
no we don’t. slm is not garanteed to be 750/1000 gold in the average produced alloy and therefor cannot be used for professional purposes. but for sure that depends your country’s laws on gold jewelry. We in Switzerland don’t use it at all for precious metals, but our gold watch and jewelry laws are very very strict…
yep, this in particular is extremely annoying…
I would not recommend form3 though, more expensive, consumables much much more expensive and not 2000.- better than the previous model…
As always, when a machine works fine and has some success, there’s always managers coming in and transforming it to a nespresso machine (that’s how Solidscape lost their market importance)
Unfortunately no longer stocking Form2 here so went with the 3 (ran the first print last night). Seems to have more moving parts and self-diagnostics that it performs…I can see this being potentially more problematic than the 2 after a while. If there was a more open system with the same quality as the form printers I’d happily go for it.
I still found the right one. An advanced Ender 3 model, which takes into account the shortcomings of the basic one. It has a heated table and a good cooling system. Low noise, while providing an acceptable print speed. The minimum thickness of the deposition is 100 microns, the maximum is 400 microns. Like the regular version, the improved Pro works with the STL, OBJ, and AMF formats. Simplify3D, Repetier-Host, Ultimaker Cura packages are used as Software. Compared to the base model, the Pro version has a significantly expanded list of available printing materials. It has the ability to fine-tune most parameters, but it is better to do this using an external program, since the main control menu is slightly inconvenient. Only here I do not know where to order from atop or from Aliexpress just reading an article that I think will help me https://alitools.io/en/blog/banggood-vs-aliexpress/
Did you look at the Solus? I cast jewellery in house and started printing resin to cast 8 years ago with an Asiga Pico. Have used the Solus now for a bit over 4 years since the Asiga died.
The Solus has been flawless. Great print quality, fast an inexpensive…open to any resin. I use the original component format printer over their all in one unit as I prefer the component system in case of failure…which I have not had yet.
Might not look as pretty as an all in one unit on a desktop but it does a brilliant job.
I’ve had a B9 Core 530 since Sept 2017. So far I’ve spent 0 hrs on maintenance and calibration. I’ve had 0 failed prints. Oh, and I’ve spent $0 on extra vats, parts, and annual licenses. It just works.
It’s the cheapest of the pro-level DLP machines (Ti UV light engine vs a projector/panel) at $10k. Pro-sumer machines are cheaper in the $200-$4,000 range until you factor in all the time and money you spend fiddling with calibrations or vats.
Having a SolidScape T76+ and a B9 V1.2, I was nervous dropping that kind of money on yet another printer. It was easily the best hardware investment I made in our shop. I talk about all three of them a bit more in my casting paper:
It’s clearly Solidscapes best product!