Tag: ultimaker

Design choices in RepRap, Goals of RepRap [08/14/2010]

[The early 2010’s were a wild time for 3D printing.  It felt like there were two separate tracks of printers.  There were the RepRap enthusiasts, the true innovators, building and inventing things to push hobbyist 3D printing to new heights.  Then there were the companies making 3D printer kits and robots like MakerBot and Ultimaker (and a few others).  At this time I was basically wondering… what will future RepRaps look like?  Will they look more like a pile of aluminum extrusion and 3D printed parts?  Lasercut panels?  In the 16 years since this post, the answer is… there doesn’t seem to be one single RepRap that’s leading the field and there are a pile of different RepRaps that have all kinds of different shapes.  Perhaps this is for the best.  There are so many functional 3D printers available that range from very DIY to point and click that there isn’t nearly as much innovation in the open source RepRap movement.  I suppose, this is a kind of success for the RepRap dream.  Some excellent fully featured printers are available today for as less than $500 that would have left crowds stunned in 2010.  And all of these machines can easily produce the parts necessary to build the various RepRap models out there.  Gone are the days of resin cast copies of 3D printed parts.  If companies stopped producing 3D printers (perhaps because of some new bullshit misguided legislation…), people could turn to building RepRaps again.]

After looking at the Ultimaker, I have to wonder if the ideal of RepRap for a purely printed machine is non-optimal.

Actually, come to think of it – I wonder if it might not start to push RepRap in a slightly new direction.

Drafts Zero - The Lost Blog Posts
  1. Misnamer [11/28/2010]
  2. The Lost Blog Posts
  3. Plastruder! [Draft 12/25/2009]
  4. UNTITLED [Draft 12/25/2009]
  5. Preparing to print [Draft 12/27/2009]
  6. More prints [Draft 01/04/2010]
  7. Prototype Pricing [Draft 01/19/2010]
  8. MakerBot tuning [Draft 01/20/2010]
  9. Plastic Screw Anchor [Draft 02/02/2010]
  10. Magic [Draft 02/03/2010]
  11. How are you printing with PLA? [Draft 02/16/2010]
  12. Rebuilding my extruder [Draft 02/16/2010]
  13. MY robot [Draft 02/18/2010]
  14. more things i learned [Draft 02/20/2010]
  15. First commissioned piece! [Draft 02/22/2010]
  16. MakerBot: Toy or Tool? [02/25/2010]
  17. Idea for Skeinforge settings… [Draft 03/27/2010]
  18. RepRap and MakerBot alternatives [Draft 04/05/2010]
  19. RepRap Parts for Sale [Draft 04/07/2010]
  20. Where is the Othercutter? [Draft 06/08/2015]
  21. Mendel Parts – Printed, Cast, CNC’d, Lasercut or Injection Molded? [Draft 04/12/2010]
  22. MakerBot Operator’s Manual [06/04/20210]
  23. MakerBot on CBS! [07/07/2010]
  24. New Print: Soft-Pawed Albino Stoat of South Wales Cookie Cutter [07/07/2010]
  25. House calls [07/11/2010]
  26. Digital assistant? [08/05/2010]
  27. MakerBot + Junk = Stuff! [08/06/2010]
  28. Design choices in RepRap, Goals of RepRap [08/14/2010]
  29. Upgrades and obsolescence [08/25/2010]
  30. Dear Anonymous [08/25/2010]
  31. The ultimate in customer service [08/26/2010]
  32. Open Source Makes You Smarter [08/27/2010]
  33. Getting my Plastruder MK5 running [09/06/2010]
  34. Weird new kind of spam [09/19/2010]
  35. An open letter to Ms. Word [10/18/2010]
  36. Printing with PLA again! [10/18/2010]
  37. Halloween costume too [10/27/2010]
  38. Dream jobs [10/29/2010]
  39. The nuances of time travel [10/31/2010]
  40. Printed Pink Panther Person [11/22/2010]
  41. Skein them all and let ‘Bot sort them all out [11/24/2010]
  42. The Patents for disc shooters [12/10/2010]
  43. Princess Bride with Lightsabers [12/13/2010]
  44. Dilbert comic [12/13/2010]
  45. Ultimachine PLA review [12/15/2010]
  46. Mendel to the power of 101 [12/21/2010]
  47. Potential improvements for Leonardo Voltron [12/27/20210]
  48. You can keep your filthy money [12/28/2010]
  49. I watched Primer the other night [12/30/2010]

New affordable 3D printer – the Ultimaker

Ultimaker
Ultimaker

Update 3/28/2011:  The Ultimaker is available for pre-order!

Erik de Bruijn along with a newly formed Dutch RepRap group have put together this new design for a low cost RepRap alternative.  The stated goal of their blog is “designing/developing an easy to build low cost 3D printer with a small form factor but large build envelope.”  Erik has invited everyone to comment on this beta design.  It’s interesting to see their progression of prototypes in their second blog post.

The interesting thing about this model is that it combines some of the best parts of Darwin and MakerBot and what appears to be a Bowden extruder.

The very nature of FDM1 means that the robot will only move the Z axis a little bit every once in a while.  One of the design drawbacks to the Darwin was that the heavy extruder head (motors, gears, heating elements) were so heavy that the entire robot would rock or vibrate with the lateral XY movements.  MakerBot got around the heavy extruder head problem by moving the platform in the XY and moving the extruder head only up and down.  This design decision isn’t without it’s tradeoffs, however.  One downside is that their build area is much smaller than a Darwin.  Another downside of the MakeBot design is that once the object being built reaches a sufficiently large volume or height, moving the object around quickly on the XY platform causes it to vibrate, shake, and become somewhat unstable.

One of the main improvements inherent in the Bowden extruder is that it allows you to take the heaviest parts of the extruder head, separate them from the rest of the extruder head, and move those heavy pieces to a different location.  Using a Bowden extruder makes a Darwin style robot much more feasible – the small moveable print head won’t have the mass to cause the robot to become unstable.

It seems that combining either of the X or Y movements with the Z probably won’t matter all that much, since the Z axis will only move about 0.33mm or so per layer and the Z axis typically doesn’t operate at the same time as either the X or Y axis.  Combining the as the new RepRap version II, Mendel, design shows us that combining the Z axis along with either the X or Y axis, but not both, can lead to a very stable configuration.

What I like about the Ultimaker design is that it would appear to incorporate some of the best parts of the MakerBot and Darwin designs. It appears to have a bolt/nut/T-slot MakerBot style assembly structure using thin lasercut wood pieces for the body.  I found these parts to bolt together very quickly.  Contrast this to the Darwin/Mendel structure using lots of nuts and threaded rod and printed plastic parts to hold it together.  At the same time, by making use of a Bowden extruder and the Darwin body shape, it appears to be able to use most of the interior volume for printing.

I suspect it probably uses fewer parts than a typical Darwin, but I can’t be sure.  I also have to wonder about the cost of lasercut wood versus the cost of nuts and threaded rod.

Nice find RepRap Log Phase!

  1. Fused deposition modeling – basically creating a layer and then fusing a new layer on top of that layer in succession to build up an object. [↩]
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