Instead of going the injection molding route my boss bought 6 UP Box 3d printers. We are printing in ABS @.15mm layers and the end product has been beautiful. I manage the printers and the OEM software is terrible. It only lets you do one task with one printer at a time and has no debugging like I could do with Marlin. My workplace is looking at getting 20-30 printers in the next week or two. I’m trying to avoid the upbox route due to the shear amount time involved in using the software. We are also looking at the TAZ 6 with enclosures but I’m worried I wont be able to get the quality I’m we are getting currently. We have a Taz 5 with a .3mm nozzle. Today I just started to try and dial the slicer settings in to see how it would compare. Is there any 3D printers that can match or beat the UP Box in terms of surface quality and ease of support removal. Thank you!
@kylerwinters I’ve had many FDM printers from Makerbots through to Cubicons and nothing compares to the support removal on UP printers. You can try to replicate it with other printers and slicing with Simplify3D but it still isn’t a good.
The print quality of the Cubicon Single (and Single Plus) is the best I have seen but, as with many printers, the software lets it down and support is poor because it is based on an old version of Cura.
The best software by a long way, work flow wise for multiple printers is AutoMaker for the CEL Robox but that is a very different machine. The new Robox Dual can use PolySupport or similar but again is based on an old version of Cura so can’t have a support roof like the old seen on UP printers.
What about Zortrax? I’ve not used their printers but I understand their support removal is supposed to be pretty good, and they’re fully enclosed so should be OK with ABS.
If it’s surface quality you’re looking for, then SLA is really the way to go, but you’re limited in terms of material options.
My ex-employer has 2 Upbox printers, connected via a USB hub to a single laptop. When doing large job (multiple parts), I’ll select one printer, set parameter, send a job, then select another and send another job, no problem. I have a personal Upbox+ as well. I assume you are using UP Studio?
Anyway, I don’t completely understand your complaint. Were you…
1. Wanting to do additional task with a printer while it was printing? Why? The only tasks you can do while printing are PAUSE or STOP, not sure what else you want to do. Or…
2. Trying to engage multiple printer at the same time to do the same job? Don’t think any software that comes with any 3D printer can do such thing. I’m not a software developer but I do know each device have unique hardware ID (mouse/keyboard/printer/etc.) and communication between devices has to be addressed individually. In this case the PC has to first engage, then send a print job, to one printer at a time. Not possible to mass-sending a print job and expect every printer on the same network to pick up and do the job! May end up very badly if this is the case… A specially written software may be able to automatically switch device/printer and send the same print job over an over again but doubt such software exist in commercial market. By the way, after you’ve sent a job to a printer, I suspect it would take more than an hour to finish? Taking additional 3 or maybe 5 minutes to setup another printer, then another, then another, while the previous ones were printing isn’t really a waste of time, is it? Just my thought…
Have not came across debugging tool on UP STUDIO, so far no need for such feature (for me).
