3D printers

From East Essex Hackspace
Revision as of 10:42, 19 November 2021 by TimN (talk | contribs) (→‎General Info)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

General Info

The 3D Printer Lab

3D printing has been a hot topic for almost a decade and the Hackspace gives you access to several different printers. As they can be slightly noisy and generate fumes, they are based in a dedicated room along with the second smaller laser cutter.

Coming soon

3D scanning facilities coming soon! We've purchased a Creality Scan 01

FDM printing

The most common form of hobbyist 3D printing, these printers melt and fuse plastic filament building up objects in layers.

Lulzbot Minis

The Lulzbot Minis are good general purpose FDM printers for small to medium sized prints in plastic.

Ender-5 Plus

The Ender-5 Plus is another FDM printer, well suited to larger prints, but be warned, larger prints can take a very long time to complete.

Davinci XYZ

A full colour printer which uses (expensive) ink catridges to stain the filament, producing full colour prints straight out of the box. The costs for using these facilities are significantly higher - the ink cartridges are £60 each (of which there are 4) and the filament is specifically made for the ink. The printer and (separately) the inks and filament were donated to the space, though we are working on replacing the ink and the filament with 3rd party supplies.

Food printer

The Hackspace has a printer it aspires to convert into one that can print in chocolate and other similar edible material for novelty purposes.

Resin SLA printing

Predating FDM printing, SLA uses light to cure feed material which in hobbyist printers is usually a resin.

Anycubic Photon

The Anycubic Photon is an SLA printer which used UV cured resin to print in very high detail, but the resin itself is expensive, hazardous and must be handled with care.

Charging

If you bring your own 3D printing filament, use of the FDM printers is free for members with a current subscription.

The Hackspace keeps a stock of generic filament in a range of colours for the FDM printers and if you would like to use this it requires a donation of £1 per hour printing to fund consumables and maintenance. Sadly charging also applies any failed prints for this reason and the FDM printers, while generally reliable are not absolutely so.

Pricing for Resin SLA printing is TBC.

Please place your donation in cash the donation box in the room.