Join us on Wednesday, August 23 at noon Pacific for the Mass Production 3D Printing Hack Chat with Gabe Bentz!
We’ll take a wild guess and say that right now, within arm’s length of wherever you’re reading this, there’s something that was produced by injection molding. Look around; it’s there someplace, and whatever it is, thousands or perhaps millions of other identical artifacts were produced along with it, all by squeezing hot plastic into intricately machined metal tools.
It’s not much of an overstatement to say that, for good or for ill, the world is made from injection-molded plastic. But not every product can support the often considerable up-front costs associated with injection molding. The tooling needed is often remarkably complicated and correspondingly expensive, and running the machines that actually do the molding is expensive and highly specialized. Unless you’re committed to making a lot of parts, injection molding might just be out of your league.
But does that mean that medium-sized runs of parts are out of luck? Not at all! Gabe Bentz, founder and CEO of Slant 3D, is passionate about filling the manufacturing void where injection molding is prohibitive, either by virtue of start-up costs or because the part design is just not possible to manufacture. His massive print farms are busy day in and day out cranking out parts for customers that otherwise couldn’t be made. So if you’ve ever wondered what it takes to run a print farm, and what kinds of design considerations make a part a candidate for mass production by 3D printing, drop by the chat and we’ll see what he has to tell us.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, August 23 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.
Fun fact: The head picture is from Prusa’s farm in Prague, Czechia: https://stock.adobe.com/it/images/prusa-research-3d-printing-farm-in-prague-czech-republic/301117847
I thought Slant 3D use their own, not Prusa :-)
This is what there print farm looks like. They should change the picture
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/fc79c8_7357ffbb11134fbf92d74c6c3ff2c47e~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_2592,h_1728,al_c,q_90/fc79c8_7357ffbb11134fbf92d74c6c3ff2c47e~mv2.webp
100% accurate and true
Even that picture is little bit outdated :)
NEWS FLASH!
CEO of 3D printing company says 3D printing is a good way to do things!
More on this shocking and unprecedented revelation at 11!
Seriously. Is HaD just going to echo any PR email they get that includes 3d printing, circuit boards, or an Arduino?
I’m waiting for the latest announcement about the ‘555. There are so many things it could be used for.
555 bants, never change HN
3D printing and mass production shouldn’t be in one sentence.
Unless we combine efficient industrial warm/hot extrusion with robotic arm.
Why extrude just one layer if you can extrude entire surface in liquid and/or conveyor belt?
I mean variable geometry extrusion:
As example (Flashing light warning!;P) https://inv.bp.projectsegfau.lt/watch?v=VRC59iJjOwk
I’m sorry – but this guy is 99.99% sales man – the HAD writer setting this up is being taken for a ride. THe guy owns a huge print farm, and all his videos on youtube have this weird/angry/aggressive vibe about how his way of designing things are so much better for the world, and you must adapt to his ways or else..(his way just happens to be better for 3d printing – surprise, surprise) While you have him chatting, please ask where he got his engineering degree – he likes to dodge that question, but claim he is one.
This obviously has his bias in 3d printing. But how is it got to do with his degree. Having it doesn’t make this opinions valid or vice versa.
I often points he made incisive as we often don’t design with 3d printing in mind. But you don’t make any valid argument against his opinion except that his degree. George, you can do better than that. This isn’t YouTube comments.
It’s HAD – the comments are worse :) But you’re trying to conflate the two topics I mentioned – I never said there was a connection – that mistake is on you.
I’m also put off by his weird overly-aggressive tone.
He has some good points but it’s a very hard “3D printing is the only future and you’re a morno if you think otherwise” vibe.
If I owned stock in a printer filament company it would be a great future.