As you might know, several of the parts on the Sienci Mill One are 3D printed. With all of the orders we are filling this means there is a lot of 3D printing to do! To meet the demand, we have several 3D printers dedicated to making parts for the Sienci Mill One, working almost 24 hours a day.
If you read our previous blog posts, we ordered two new Maker Select 3D printers. Unfortunately one of the printers had bad LMU88 linear bearings on the Y axis, and so we had to get it sent back. We’ve ordered another one which should arrive in the next few days.
Here’s a photo of our current setup:
Chris and I went to Walmart last night to pick up one of these shelves to put our 3D printers on, and soon enough, it will be full of 3D printers!
We also went to Mississauga to pick up 25kg of 3D printer filament. It should keep us busy for about a week and a half, but it looks like we’re going to have to order more soon. Luckily we were able to get a really good deal on them, and the quality has been quite good. If you’re in the Kitchener/Waterloo area and want us to pick some filament up for you the next time we go, feel free to email us!
Hey Stephan! Andy has been running the printers a lot recently and has told me that we’ve been using 80 percent infill with 3 perimeters at a 0.35mm layer height. All of our printers run with a 0.6mm nozzle to balance the quality and printing time 🙂
Best!
Chris
Could you share your slicer settings with us? I’m reprinting a replacement part for the Sienci mill one v3 and I want to make sure that I’m using the right infill etcetera.
Thanks for your commitment to open source! I cannot wait for my longmill.
Stephan
Hi David,
Thanks for the suggestion! We’ve weighed out all the option for making parts and we’ve decided that at the quantity we want, 3D printing is the easiest and cost effective way to produce parts for a lot of reasons, especially as you said, the extra level of flexibility.
When I get the chance, I will write a more extensive blog post on why we used 3D printing, but feel free to keep in touch with us if you have any other thoughts!
Cheers,
Andy
I am wondering if 3D printing is the most cost effective method for producing all of this parts. Some look like they could be easily made from casting plastics? It would be a trade of in capital costs verses flexibility. Once set your design and made your mold the casting are very inexpensive as you make more but you are stuck with the design. With 3D printing you can continously update the design but each part cost the same produce regardless of quantities.