Check out this cool advert PostNL did showing a delivery of an Ultimaker to a customer while it’s still printing in the box!
do you this its showcasing how gentle PostNL is or, how robust the Ultimaker 3D printer is?
luv that sea of Ultimakers!
Pretty impressive, but how is it powered inside the box ?
Extremely impressive. I knew Ultimakers were robust, but I never imagined they could print while being transported under no special care.
I’ve always regarded my P3Steel as durable, but I know that it would never be able to do such a thing.
That’s Joris. He’s an amazing guy. Last I checked (6 months ago) he doesn’t work for Ultimaker but he works at the fablab that started ultimaker and he is very friendly with the founders and others there. Joris is the guy who 3d printed the life size elephant (1:1 scale) at schipol airport.
I’m sure it’s powered by the same batteries popular now on quadcopters. The printer should work fine from around 20V to 24V so a 6S lipo pack would be 22.2V which is close enough. I’ve seen people with UMO printers on their backs - that used to be a thing at shows like Makerfaire. I’m not sure if Joris started that also. Those were closer to 19V so a 5S pack was used. There used to be a “Joris” feature in Cura but now it’s called “spiralize” I think.
Those lipo batteries are pretty amazing - they can pack a lot of power in a light weight battery - very popular for fixed wing and multi propeller drones. They also tend to burst into flames if you let them discharge all the way and spew out molten metals so I’m guessing this one was followed with a cameraman the entire time.
Oh also - FDM printers can print in any orientation. I’ve tried it as I thought it might improve overhangs but alas it seems to make no difference. Ultimaker at makerfaire’s and such used to hang a printer upside down by a rope sometimes while it was printing.
I’ve been thinking about the power source as well. I have to imagine there were some corners cut in terms of power, since in order to run at a conservative (for a UM2) 120W or so for even 5 hours, you’d need 5 6S 5000mAh batteries (and if you haven’t seen batteries of that size, they’re actually pretty massive). Maybe they turned the heated bed off entirely?
Although, this did made me consider making a battery powered Reprap. A single 22.2v 5000mAh battery could power a ToyREP for a good 2 hours.
That might explain why it was printed on the masking tape rather than directly on the bed!
That might explain why it was printed on the masking tape rather than directly on the bed!
I know a plethora of printers that would have done the same thing effortlessly, so nothing special there.
(Mind though the extrusion system weight difference between a direct drive and bowden system!)
Even better: there are printers that could have done this and STILL have the same footprint being boxed (FlashForge even) the Ultimaker requires the filament spool to hang outside on the back taking up an extra % of space. Pressure from the side would have inevitably caused the filament flow the be disturbed.
Apart from all that I find this ad rather misleading, many of the people delivering packages for PostNL are independent contractors and they can maintain a completely different standard with regard to shipping and handling (I’ve got quite a lot of experience there) I prefer DHL or UPS anytime.
Say what you want about other printers doing the print… and how the shipping company treated the package… but overall the concept is pretty cool if you asked me! I mean I once tried 3D printing in my car as I was driving with my UM2 but sadly my power inverter didn’t have the goods =(… so no dice (even with the heated bed off). Being I am a bit of a snob for camera work in videos I have to say they did an A+ job documenting it given the circumstances!
And lets face it Europeans tend to be pretty mellow people from my experience vs Americans so it could explain why they didn’t play football with the box :-D!
