3D printers

From East Essex Hackspace
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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.

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.

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. 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.

Pricing for Resin SLA printing is TBC.