Desmoda tells all in a recent expose of his experiences using ZCorp 3D printers over the past few years. While ZCorp’s devices are praised – for speed, consumable cost and color capabilities, Desmoda reveals the dark side of using the devices, including:
- Problems obtaining a suitable smooth finish, as the raw printouts are “plastery”
- The time required to post-process printed objects
- Difficulties in printing solid black (“greyish”) and solid white (“yellowish”) material
- Whitening of models due to excessive humidity affects on the hardening agent
You can watch a great video of the ZCorp printing process here. It’s interesting to note that the video (and most others you’ll encounter) do not show the post-processing work.
Clearly, not optimal. But still very useful, as many businesses do use ZCorp daily. We think (as Desmoda does) that this may be an opening for ZCorp’s competitors to leverage.
Via Desmoda
Objet Geometries has just announced an extension to its trade-in program. They’re offering up to $80,000 credit for an older Objet 3D printer as a trade-in when buying one of their Connex multi-material 3D printers or a newer Eden machine. And, they’re offering some incentives for trade-ins of non-Objet 3D printers. Worth checking it all out ā http://www.objet.com.
While Zcorp is certainly no silver bullet, it is still the fastest, most affordable, and only technology for 24bit color. There are ways to get around the hurdles mentioned, unfortunately, many are trade secrets and rarely shared in this VERY competitive industry.
However, a safe bet is to not only ordered parts from an established and informative bureau (such as halfpriceprototypes.com), but also seek the same service if you are looking to purchase a 3D printer. For example, EMS, Inc provides very thorough On-Site training including tips from the professionals that know the technology inside and out. Many of these techniques have actually been developed in their labs and passed down to Z Corp. Their website is http://www.ems-usa.com
Here at PROTOFACTURING we have a secret finishing process that brightens the colours and whitens the whites while making the parts less susceptible to dirt and grime from handling. – Free quotes for all your RP needs. SLS SLA FDM 3DP CNC
http://www.protofacturing.com
As a heavy RP technique user (MeshLab is used a lot in this context) I would like to add some notes about the items listed above:
1) For me this is a nice feature! In some context the sandy but detailed finish of the zcorp output is really welcome. Just to cite an example, by personal experience, in Cultural Heritage reproductions the smooth, plastic finish is usually considered very ‘fake’, while the raw-stone finishing is much better considered.
2) true, but this holds for a lot of different RP techniques (e.g. think to removal of supports)
3) true, the quality of their colors must be improved, definitely, but currently there are not many other options around for 3D color printing…
4) no comments here.
On the other and I would add that reproduced objects with this kind are more fragile than you could expect, and that it is much more easy to stain and mess up them if you touch them many times with not perfectly clean hands…
I will add something more on this subject and about the possibility of better exploiting the zcolor printing capabilities on the meshlab blog (http://meshlabstuff.blogspot.com“ REL=”nofollow”>meshlabstuff.blogspot.com) in the next days…