Grupo Sicnova made a couple of interesting announcements this week.
The Spanish 3D print service company announced a new mid-range industrial 3D printer, the JCR 600, to complement their successful JCR 1000 that has been available for a couple of years. At €16K (USD$18K), it carries an inexpensive price compared to larger equipment.
The JCR 600 is a large format 3D printer, with a build volume that’s smaller than its larger sibling, the JCR 1000. You can 3D print objects up to 600 x 400 x 500 with this dual-extrusion machine.
The fully enclosed machine is capable of 3D printing a wide variety of common engineering materials, although it does not provide enough heat to use exotic materials such as PEEK or ULTEM.
The dual extruder feature (included) enables use of the increasingly popular soluble support approach for highly complex 3D prints.
As some other large-format 3D printer manufacturers have done, the JCR 600 includes a variety of nozzle sizes to optimize the printing of larger objects. The standard 0.4mm nozzle is similar to desktop equipment and can be used for finely detailed prints, but for speed you can quickly swap in a 0.5, 0.6 or 0.8mm nozzles. The 0.8mm nozzle offers 4X the area, suggesting prints could be up to 4 times faster when using this larger nozzle. However, surface quality on prints will be not as smooth.
The JCR 600 also includes an automated leveling system, a feature increasingly common on more expensive equipment. A webcam and network connection provide an ability for limited remote management. Of course, you’ll still have to physically load and unload the machine, but at least you can observe the prints in progress.
In addition to the JCR 600, Group Sicnova also announced a standalone part inspection unit, the Cloneinspector 2. This machine holds a freshly 3D printed part and rotates it under the gaze of multiple laser sensors. The system then determines the part’s precise shape and compares it to a stored version to ensure that it was made correctly. This is a critical quality control system for some 3D print operations.
Grupo Sicnova is positioning the JCR 600 as a bridge between smaller desktop machines and their rather large JCR 1000, which happens to have a massive build volume of 1000 x 600 x 600, three times larger than the new JCR 600’s. Grupo Sicnova explains:
JCR 600 is a large format industrial 3D printer which build volume is 600x400x500 mm. This new 3D printer uses FDM technology for manufacturing parts with plastic extrusion, and it’s capable of making bigger parts tan traditional desktop 3D printers. In this way JCR 600 is the link between this small format machines and the large industrial 3D printers.
And this I find interesting. There have been several highly successful large format 3D printer manufacturers in recent years, notably 3D Platform and BigRep, each of which have discovered a profitable niche where customers need to 3D print large objects at relatively low prices.
While Grupo Sicnova is also in that market with the JCR 1000, they seem to feel they must also be in a slightly smaller market, where there are few options available today. Most desktop machines are in the 300mm range or lower, while the larger units are 700mm and up. Perhaps they’re on to something big here?
Via Grupo Sicnova (Spanish)
