Ultimaker 3dprints while being delivered to its destination

[XYZWorkshop]

Check out this cool advert PostNL did showing a delivery of an Ultimaker to a customer while it’s still printing in the box!

PostNL | Sound of Delivery

do you this its showcasing how gentle PostNL is or, how robust the Ultimaker 3D printer is?

luv that sea of Ultimakers!

[nakwada]

Pretty impressive, but how is it powered inside the box ?

[XYZWorkshop]

Must be using a UPS?

[karlzhao314]

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.

[gr5org]

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.

[gr5org]

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.

[karlzhao314]

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.

[XYZWorkshop]

That might explain why it was printed on the masking tape rather than directly on the bed!

[XYZWorkshop]

That might explain why it was printed on the masking tape rather than directly on the bed!

[siriusbizzy]

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.

[gr5org]

Much less than 120W. More like 50W or even 30W. The heated bed was off (hence the tape). The nozzle heater is 25W but it is on less than 50% for typical printing. The steppers can use up to about 10 to 20W each briefly I believe but are normally much less. I’ve measured the current flows before but I’m too lazy to grab all my notes. But still it’s quite a bit of power and you would need something like a typical drone battery pack for each hour of use I think. Plus room for the filament. That’s why the box is a bit oversized on one side?

[JATMN]

Please… if you can find a single shipping company in the USA that ships 1/4 as kindly as that…
My UM2 came with the corner of the box smashed in and a hole in the side. Delivery guy even delivered it laying on its side.
No one in the states cares about “this side up” until they are trying to open the box, and no one handles packages like that… They are kicked and shoved around. I had 3 different shoe print marks on my box as well as most the packages I get.

This commercial is completely staged. *thumb down*

[rooiejoris_nl]

That totally explains the masking tape on the UM2 bed… : )

[karlzhao314]

Yeah, the 120W was my estimate if the bed was on. I don’t know the specifics for the Ultimaker’s bed specifically, but to maintain a constant 70C temperature my MK2 with a glass plate is on about 60% output all the time. I was going to go ahead and assume the Ultimaker’s bed was more efficient than mine, so I estimated the entire printer would draw about as much as my bed under normal load.

[CWCrawlers]

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!