41

We just bought one for work and I can give you a viewpoint. It is largely turnkey; input a model and it produces parts w/o much specialized knowledge, as long as you stay on the reservation. It is amazing to have parts produced, w/o regard to overhangs or holes or other limitations with this ease. It works that well for material pairs it has programmed into it. If you need something else, you are on your own again.

Three items as warnings.1) the build volume listed is NOT for dual builds as that costs some space between heads. Also there are some keep-out zones that reduce usable space a bit for some shapes. Convincing it to print near the size limit is arduous. 2) The software can be uppity, single minded, and uncooperative if you need to do something the programmer had not thought of. 3) The niceties are subject to the rule of unintended consequences. The very convenient front cover of the print carriage, with its magnetic catch, makes changing hot ends easy. Up until a large part lost adhesion one night and somehow popped the cover loose. By the light of day, the failed part was not the ball of fishing line we have come to love, but because the partially open cover blocked the extrusion, it had backed up, filled the print head with molten PETT, overflowing back up into the release mechanism for both heads. I have a new appreciation for just how strong PETT is now. Also an aversion to the whole “easy to open” concept, I’m going to wire it shut with a bail. Trust me, the easy change feature failed here.

Live and learn. Other than that, yes a nice machine for business.

1 Like
42

Just FYI there are others that have some kind of lifting mechanism and I only know of the diamond hotend that is different though very unpractical for multiple different material types. To what other manufacturer’s were you referring? Even if there will be advantages to using UM materials with RFID you will always be capable of selecting a material type manually… Because UM wants to be open for experimentation. Though marketing did want tracking of matrrial to tie it to a customer via RFID, we talked them out of that one :slight_smile: We also tested the lifting mechanism extensively, we had printers doing nothing but nozzle switching for weeks, to verify wear and tear and reproducibility of position. But it is always good to see for yourself and I do agree with others is is not made or priced for home use.

43

Yes the 0.8mm nozzle is veing tested ATM and some smaller then 0.4 mm nozzles will be comming in for testing soon, ofcourse I have no idea what and when it will be released by marketing. The advantage over something cobbled together (there is a retrofit of a um core you can put your choise of nozzle size on, find it on the um forums) is that the machine will know the nozzle size and adjust accordingly (for instance during xy calibration) and notify cura of the size. Same goes for material type, that is also synced to cura and that is one of the advantages of RFID imho.

44

Ny Collogue just printed woodfill on the UM3 with the BB core as that lacks the flat bit inside the core, it flows a bit more easily :slight_smile: it worked fine. (A BB core also oozes more easily, btw)

45

check out these guys, they semed to like it a lot