17 ms·

Creality Developing Belt-Driven Desktop 3D Printer

74 points by mrfusion 6y ago

oxygenz 6y ago
very kuul
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Isn't this patented by Stratasys?
- Animats 6y ago
  BlackBelt 3D claims a pending patent, but a quick search didn't find it. There's a few of these. [1] Creality's unit, with the triangular support structure, looks more solid than the others. This really reflects progress in printing materials. Printing at an angle probably would not have worked with the filaments of a decade ago. Remember the need for heated build plates, and a warmed environment around the printer? [1] https://youtu.be/E_RvnqVHbnA https://youtu.be/E_RvnqVHbnA
  - wanderingjew 6y ago
    Patent would be invalidated by prior art.
unwind 6y ago
Meta: please, mods, edit the title to remove the chevron and domain. Thanks.
gangstead 6y ago
The article uses some confusing terminology. Almost all 3D printers use belts to drive at least one axis. Creality is just making their version of a niche style where the build plate is a conveyer belt instead.
- janoc 6y ago
  Yeah, that ticked me off too. This is certainly not "belt driven" in the normal sense.
leon_sbt 6y ago
This is really interesting. In my opinion, Prusa is the best in class printer to purchase for a turnkey machine. If you want to scale up a printfarm. Add more Prusa's and some humans to tend them. But there was never really a way to run the print farm lights out. As in queue up the job for 7 days. Then have humans show up at the end of the week and package ship orders. If there was an OTS machine that could contend Prusa for production value per dollar. This looks to be it. I'll be buying one of these when they are out. For the patent comment, I think Stratasys has a patent on it, but one of the claims is that the machine prints with orthogonal axes. Angle the print head and now its good? https://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/continuous-build-3d-printer https://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/continuous-build-3d-pr...
- mrfusion 6y ago
  Does angling offer any benefit?
  - cellular 6y ago
    For a single motor, you get: a height axis, and ability for long prints, and multiple unmanned prints. Looks stiffer too.
    - mrfusion 6y ago
      But doesn’t the belt give you those things? Why also print at an angle?
      - cellular 6y ago
        Oops, my reply is above.
      - makerofspoons 6y ago
        It has been speculated that it helped them circumvent MakerBot's patent on conveyor belts on additive 3D printers: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8668859B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8668859B2/en
msds 6y ago
I really don't understand the appeal of this sort of machine. I have a pretty big (300x300x300mm) and very fast printer, and large prints are still annoyingly slow and expensive. I can't ever imagine FDM printing (especially with a small, filament-fed hotend) being an appropriate way to make "arbitrarily long" objects. Other people have scaled the platform I have up to 500mm and 700mm, and get great results on genuinely large objects too, not just on long things. Furthermore, the volume production stuff is just silly. If I'm printing a bunch of small objects, I'd rather fill a build tray with them, and then swap it out every 8 hours when it's done. The belt release stuff really seems to have reliability issues. Or, just use an appropriate manufacturing technique for high volumes... Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon with bad memories of belt build surfaces from a Thing-O-Matic.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Long objects I think are the main draw in that this is one of the very few ways to make them at home. Whether it will work or not isn’t clear but it certainly is one of the cool things. The continuous production is neat in that you might not want to print the same thing over and over. Say you are printing miniatures that you sell on Etsy. Order comes in, goes straight into the printer queue and all you have to do is toss it into a box and ship it when it’s done. Of course if you are producing thousands of identical objects then something like injection molding will be better. But if you are producing thousands of not quite identical objects, this would be a fantastic system.
  - janoc 6y ago
    The long objects idea neglects basic physics - unless the part hanging off the side is very light, at certain point it is going to drop down and peel the other side from the belt, ruining the print. So in practice such machine will be limited to printing objects with maybe 2x the length of the belt max before the belt deformation and objects peeling off become a problem. You really wouldn't want to do continuous production like this - the printing surface needs to be cleaned too, glue or whatever you are using for adhesion re-applied, otherwise the adhesion and finish will suck over time, causing problems. How are you going to do it on a moving belt while the machine is running? Sure, it can be solved but the Creality machine doesn't have any provisions for it. And if you are producing thousands of not quite identical objects, buy three or four printers instead - the production will be much faster and more reliable than this belt nonsense, especially today when a printer can be had for less than $300 ...
cellular 6y ago
Any idea how much this would cost? Ball park? I never bought a printer.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  $400-900? The current ender 3’s are $200-400.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
  I would guess between $600-$800 USD. Keep in mind Creality printers are kits so you do have to assemble them yourself. Not too difficult, but definitely a learning curve on your first printer. YouTube and Reddit help a lot, though.
cellular 6y ago
Is there a slicer that can create g code to print in this angular fashion? (So diy'ers could make one)? I wonder what could be used for the belt? This structure actually looks easier to build and seems more sturdy.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  It’s not a slicer problem but a firmware one. The slicer tells the printer something like “G1 X30 Y10 E5” and it’s up to the printer firmware to figure out how to move the X axis 30mm, the Y axis 10mm while extruding 5mm of filament. Given the fact that the X kinematic here are identical to a bed slinger, just with no end stops, Y and Z use kinematic similar to a CoreXY setup, this shouldn’t take much at all. I guess this would be CoreYZ? Also, this is Creality which uses Marlin for their firmware. Chances are we will see this in Marlin in no time. As far as ease of build, I suspect that’s not quite the case. The main thing I would worry about is the belt flexing under the print head. If you think about it, the nozzle only moves across the bed in a straight line, left to right. To print an object with a Y dimension you need to move the belt forward and back and depending on how you set up the line on which things are printed if there is flex there you won’t get bed adhesion. You could use the treadmill belt material coated with something that can be printed on. Or whatever belt sander belts are made of before the abrasive is glued on.
  - cellular 6y ago
    But the belt only moves forward, never backwards, in the video. So I thought the slicer would need to change. A one-way belt also wouldn't have as much problems with adhesion, or backlash that you mentioned with a two-way belt. Also, the nozzle moves in the Z direction (not just x). Actually the Z direction is really a little z and a little y.
  - xsmasher 6y ago
    That doesn't sound right; the slicer outputs paths, and the firmware isn't going translate flat paths into diagonal paths. The head can not travel in a plane parallel to the base plate, so it can't use paths calculated for a regular flat primer.
donmatito 6y ago
No mention of involvment of realsexycyborg here? i'm not 100% sure of the story but she's quite involved in the new design https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1300997533485785088 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/130099753348578508...
- imtringued 6y ago
  The Creality Ender 30 is based on the opensource White Knight 3D [0] printer by NAK3DDesigns [1] though so why would you give her most of the credit? [0] https://github.com/NAK3DDesigns/White-Knight https://github.com/NAK3DDesigns/White-Knight [1] https://twitter.com/nak3ddesigns?lang=de https://twitter.com/nak3ddesigns?lang=de
  - donmatito 6y ago
    perhaps because he gives himself credit[0] ? Or do you think industrializing a design is not valuable ? [0] https://twitter.com/NAK3DDesigns/status/1303470020450750472 https://twitter.com/NAK3DDesigns/status/1303470020450750472
defterGoose 6y ago
It seems like an engineering mistake to have the nozzle canted in relation to the bed. Bed adhesion and first layer quality is necessarily going to be compromised. Additionally, the ability to achieve good surface finish on high aspect ratio and rectilinear parts is reduced (at least without introducing a material quantity penalty and previously-unnecessary support structures.) Fight me.
ChuckMcM 6y ago
Full marks for thinking out of the box. It will be interesting to watch. The claim "infinitely long" is rubbish of course, you have to balance the rest of the object, so maybe a later add-on for a 'catch ramp' of various lengths. I'm curious how they hope to deal with alternative materials (PLA can do this but good luck trying to get that to work with TGLASE or P90 or HDPE. Also thinks like ABS that shrink and so a heated base is essential would be challenging on a belt. No matter what, if they get it into production it will advance the understanding of the state of the art.
- asddubs 6y ago
  infinitely long also wouldn't be possible since once the belt travels half its length, the object would be fully released from it
antoniuschan99 6y ago
FDM 3D Printing has some exciting innovations including Belt-Driven Beds, Non-Planar, and 5-axis systems. The quality of FDM is so high now and the price is so low. I really wanted to go through the Injection Mold route at one point, but cost is just too high. Average quote was $8,000 for the mold (small parts too) and each shot was ~$1. Prints on FDM is already $0.75. It does take 1.5 hours to print the part though, but there's no lead time and you are able to make incremental changes to the part design. FDM 3D printing vs Injection Mold feels like Hybrid Web App vs. Native App Development. The FDM prints have that uncanny valley feel where it's 80-95% there, but just not quite perfect (eg. layer lines, not high enough resolution).

74 points by mrfusion 6y ago

oxygenz 6y ago

very kuul

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

Isn't this patented by Stratasys?

Animats 6y ago
BlackBelt 3D claims a pending patent, but a quick search didn't find it. There's a few of these. [1] Creality's unit, with the triangular support structure, looks more solid than the others. This really reflects progress in printing materials. Printing at an angle probably would not have worked with the filaments of a decade ago. Remember the need for heated build plates, and a warmed environment around the printer? [1] https://youtu.be/E_RvnqVHbnA https://youtu.be/E_RvnqVHbnA
- wanderingjew 6y ago
  Patent would be invalidated by prior art.

unwind 6y ago

Meta: please, mods, edit the title to remove the chevron and domain. Thanks.

gangstead 6y ago

The article uses some confusing terminology. Almost all 3D printers use belts to drive at least one axis. Creality is just making their version of a niche style where the build plate is a conveyer belt instead.

janoc 6y ago
Yeah, that ticked me off too. This is certainly not "belt driven" in the normal sense.

leon_sbt 6y ago

This is really interesting. In my opinion, Prusa is the best in class printer to purchase for a turnkey machine. If you want to scale up a printfarm. Add more Prusa's and some humans to tend them. But there was never really a way to run the print farm lights out. As in queue up the job for 7 days. Then have humans show up at the end of the week and package ship orders. If there was an OTS machine that could contend Prusa for production value per dollar. This looks to be it. I'll be buying one of these when they are out. For the patent comment, I think Stratasys has a patent on it, but one of the claims is that the machine prints with orthogonal axes. Angle the print head and now its good? https://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/continuous-build-3d-printer https://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/continuous-build-3d-pr...

mrfusion 6y ago
Does angling offer any benefit?
- cellular 6y ago
  For a single motor, you get: a height axis, and ability for long prints, and multiple unmanned prints. Looks stiffer too.
  - mrfusion 6y ago
    But doesn’t the belt give you those things? Why also print at an angle?
    - cellular 6y ago
      Oops, my reply is above.
    - makerofspoons 6y ago
      It has been speculated that it helped them circumvent MakerBot's patent on conveyor belts on additive 3D printers: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8668859B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US8668859B2/en

msds 6y ago

I really don't understand the appeal of this sort of machine. I have a pretty big (300x300x300mm) and very fast printer, and large prints are still annoyingly slow and expensive. I can't ever imagine FDM printing (especially with a small, filament-fed hotend) being an appropriate way to make "arbitrarily long" objects. Other people have scaled the platform I have up to 500mm and 700mm, and get great results on genuinely large objects too, not just on long things. Furthermore, the volume production stuff is just silly. If I'm printing a bunch of small objects, I'd rather fill a build tray with them, and then swap it out every 8 hours when it's done. The belt release stuff really seems to have reliability issues. Or, just use an appropriate manufacturing technique for high volumes... Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon with bad memories of belt build surfaces from a Thing-O-Matic.

IgorPartola 6y ago
Long objects I think are the main draw in that this is one of the very few ways to make them at home. Whether it will work or not isn’t clear but it certainly is one of the cool things. The continuous production is neat in that you might not want to print the same thing over and over. Say you are printing miniatures that you sell on Etsy. Order comes in, goes straight into the printer queue and all you have to do is toss it into a box and ship it when it’s done. Of course if you are producing thousands of identical objects then something like injection molding will be better. But if you are producing thousands of not quite identical objects, this would be a fantastic system.
- janoc 6y ago
  The long objects idea neglects basic physics - unless the part hanging off the side is very light, at certain point it is going to drop down and peel the other side from the belt, ruining the print. So in practice such machine will be limited to printing objects with maybe 2x the length of the belt max before the belt deformation and objects peeling off become a problem. You really wouldn't want to do continuous production like this - the printing surface needs to be cleaned too, glue or whatever you are using for adhesion re-applied, otherwise the adhesion and finish will suck over time, causing problems. How are you going to do it on a moving belt while the machine is running? Sure, it can be solved but the Creality machine doesn't have any provisions for it. And if you are producing thousands of not quite identical objects, buy three or four printers instead - the production will be much faster and more reliable than this belt nonsense, especially today when a printer can be had for less than $300 ...

cellular 6y ago

Any idea how much this would cost? Ball park? I never bought a printer.

mrfusion 6y ago
$400-900? The current ender 3’s are $200-400.
thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
I would guess between $600-$800 USD. Keep in mind Creality printers are kits so you do have to assemble them yourself. Not too difficult, but definitely a learning curve on your first printer. YouTube and Reddit help a lot, though.

cellular 6y ago

Is there a slicer that can create g code to print in this angular fashion? (So diy'ers could make one)? I wonder what could be used for the belt? This structure actually looks easier to build and seems more sturdy.

IgorPartola 6y ago
It’s not a slicer problem but a firmware one. The slicer tells the printer something like “G1 X30 Y10 E5” and it’s up to the printer firmware to figure out how to move the X axis 30mm, the Y axis 10mm while extruding 5mm of filament. Given the fact that the X kinematic here are identical to a bed slinger, just with no end stops, Y and Z use kinematic similar to a CoreXY setup, this shouldn’t take much at all. I guess this would be CoreYZ? Also, this is Creality which uses Marlin for their firmware. Chances are we will see this in Marlin in no time. As far as ease of build, I suspect that’s not quite the case. The main thing I would worry about is the belt flexing under the print head. If you think about it, the nozzle only moves across the bed in a straight line, left to right. To print an object with a Y dimension you need to move the belt forward and back and depending on how you set up the line on which things are printed if there is flex there you won’t get bed adhesion. You could use the treadmill belt material coated with something that can be printed on. Or whatever belt sander belts are made of before the abrasive is glued on.
- cellular 6y ago
  But the belt only moves forward, never backwards, in the video. So I thought the slicer would need to change. A one-way belt also wouldn't have as much problems with adhesion, or backlash that you mentioned with a two-way belt. Also, the nozzle moves in the Z direction (not just x). Actually the Z direction is really a little z and a little y.
- xsmasher 6y ago
  That doesn't sound right; the slicer outputs paths, and the firmware isn't going translate flat paths into diagonal paths. The head can not travel in a plane parallel to the base plate, so it can't use paths calculated for a regular flat primer.

donmatito 6y ago

No mention of involvment of realsexycyborg here? i'm not 100% sure of the story but she's quite involved in the new design https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1300997533485785088 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/130099753348578508...

imtringued 6y ago
The Creality Ender 30 is based on the opensource White Knight 3D [0] printer by NAK3DDesigns [1] though so why would you give her most of the credit? [0] https://github.com/NAK3DDesigns/White-Knight https://github.com/NAK3DDesigns/White-Knight [1] https://twitter.com/nak3ddesigns?lang=de https://twitter.com/nak3ddesigns?lang=de
- donmatito 6y ago
  perhaps because he gives himself credit[0] ? Or do you think industrializing a design is not valuable ? [0] https://twitter.com/NAK3DDesigns/status/1303470020450750472 https://twitter.com/NAK3DDesigns/status/1303470020450750472

defterGoose 6y ago

It seems like an engineering mistake to have the nozzle canted in relation to the bed. Bed adhesion and first layer quality is necessarily going to be compromised. Additionally, the ability to achieve good surface finish on high aspect ratio and rectilinear parts is reduced (at least without introducing a material quantity penalty and previously-unnecessary support structures.) Fight me.

ChuckMcM 6y ago

Full marks for thinking out of the box. It will be interesting to watch. The claim "infinitely long" is rubbish of course, you have to balance the rest of the object, so maybe a later add-on for a 'catch ramp' of various lengths. I'm curious how they hope to deal with alternative materials (PLA can do this but good luck trying to get that to work with TGLASE or P90 or HDPE. Also thinks like ABS that shrink and so a heated base is essential would be challenging on a belt. No matter what, if they get it into production it will advance the understanding of the state of the art.

asddubs 6y ago
infinitely long also wouldn't be possible since once the belt travels half its length, the object would be fully released from it

antoniuschan99 6y ago

FDM 3D Printing has some exciting innovations including Belt-Driven Beds, Non-Planar, and 5-axis systems. The quality of FDM is so high now and the price is so low. I really wanted to go through the Injection Mold route at one point, but cost is just too high. Average quote was $8,000 for the mold (small parts too) and each shot was ~$1. Prints on FDM is already $0.75. It does take 1.5 hours to print the part though, but there's no lead time and you are able to make incremental changes to the part design. FDM 3D printing vs Injection Mold feels like Hybrid Web App vs. Native App Development. The FDM prints have that uncanny valley feel where it's 80-95% there, but just not quite perfect (eg. layer lines, not high enough resolution).