Back to looking at a bigger 3D printer

In among all the other stuff I'm juggling.

The CR-10 v3 is still looking eminently plausible, though I'm still a bit unclear on the extruder temperature range and the availability of a tent that'll fit the v3.

In another tab... I was also looking at the Ender-6 (only 250x250x400mm, but super-zippy fast and comes with its own enclosure), and then there's the CR-6 Max (400mm cube!) - but, as always, full specs are not out there in the open.

Ah, well.  Probably make a decision in the next week or thereabouts, depending what other chaos comes my way.

And it seems that slicer software has been rapidly improving of late, with features for breaking up large parts, support for structural fill, and so on.

Come to think of it - on the materials front, I was looking at overhauling the old FlashForge to support high temperatures on one side.  Now if only I could upgrade the other extruder to handle squishy materials, I'd be all set for making small parts in fancy materials, and there wouldn't be much need for a high-temp hotend on the new machine.  (Once upon a time, someone published STL files for the parts to upgrade the extruder, then he took the product commercial and pulled the files, and nobody seems to be selling the parts anymore.  Oh, wait: looks like I have the February 2014 edition of the files, which didn't print satisfactorily on the FlashForge, but I guess I can try printing them on the photoresin printer and see if I get usable parts, and if that makes the extruder play nice with NinjaFlex.)

Comments

[Jim R]

I don't know what he is using these days, but Ed Nisley at softsolder.com has written a fair bit about his 3D printing experiences. You may find some useful info there.