I've yet to see/own a 3D printer myself but seen the current design,

3D Printing
,
1

I’ve yet to see/own a 3D printer myself but seen the current design, I’ve been wondering about some technical choices.
It seems like most of the current DIY 3D printers have an extruder moving on 2 axis and the heating bed on another axis.
I’m a bit concerned by the impact of having an important axis such as the X (or Y) driving the material back and forth.
From a newbie point of view, I feel concerned by getting the still hot material wobbling back and forth.

Some newer designs have the bed moving along the Z axis and X/Y are reserved to the extruder which seems more traditional (just like you would manually add matter to a still base). I assume that moving the bed along X was a cost and simplicity choice but how does the prints remain good with this design ? Is it software handled, or the curing is so fast that it doesn’t matter ?

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge

2

+Olivier Jolly
@Olivier Jolly

With the “cheap” home hobbyist self build kits you can buy I think you would only have an issue if you were printing a really tall object in relation to its base size, and you can overcome this problem by adding a “skirt” — a large area of material at the base to offer more support.

The material isn’t “wobbly” as you suggest, although there may be certain types of structure where it might be an issue. But in general it’s not a problem.

There is a new format machine called a “rostock” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKRPxz2Ad3E this machine allows for a build without any movement of the work peace at all.

There are also designs available where the X and Y axis move independent of the work peace, the work peace only moves in the Z axis and this is generally a very small increment in a vertical direction which I can’t see would have any detrimental affect to the work peace construction.

3

The material generally turns pretty solid with only a few degrees temperature change. Generally unless you’re printing something very tall and very thin, you won’t have problems.

4

The thing-o-matic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MakerBot_Industries#Thing-O-Matic) had this. In the replicator this was no longer present. It is indeed not so good :slight_smile:

5

thank you all for those answer. Turning solid with a few degrees changes should indeed makes the problem less sensitive as I feared.

6

The speed at which a layer cools is dependent on the previous layers. The thermal energy can accumulate over time and you can end up with many uncooled layers.