Updated Tour of Texas' Largest 3D Print Farm
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- We officially moved in to our new shop just over 2 years ago. To celebrate this anniversary we thought it would be fun to share an unscripted and uncensored look into how things have evolved.
We are proud to say much of the shop has grown to be exactly as we envisioned it whereas in other ways its become more than we originally planned:
• An Inside Look at a 3D...
120+ FDM 3D printers, multi-jet fusion (MJF) printers, industrial high temp ultra polymers, advanced post processing, and more. - บันเทิง
1:20 - Top right shelf. Pew pew. Welcome to Texas!
Impressive facilities. We do very specific 3D printing of our own parts in house, and we run a lot of TPU, but I always enjoy seeing someone deploying 3D printing at scale with the capability to do almost anything the current additive manufacturing technology can support.
Very cool to see all the machines you're using. If I find myself down near you, I'd love a tour!
Hey Joel, Thanks! We've been following you for years and it would be an honor to have you visit sometime. Please reach out anytime you might be in the Houston, TX area!
Just started a 3D print store with 1 printer, seeing this is very inspiring!
Best of luck to you! Hope you will find success with it.
That's great to hear! We started with a single MakerBot clone running out of a closet back in 2015 and things have snowballed ever since. Best of luck and please let us know if there you may have any questions or other ways we can help support.
Same here. I got my one tronyx x5sa. I got a LLC. I hope I can be as successful 🙏
I started my print journey with MakerBot clones in 2016 and I now am running 47 Bambu printers and still have 13 Makerbot clones chugging away :)
Love seeing the manufacturing side of the 3d print world! 🔥🔥🔥
Thanks for the support! We've always described ourselves as "a manufacturing company with 3D printers as our primary production tool". When we say we are "a 3D printing company" most people assume we primarily work with prototypes or low volumes. You can really see the industry evolving though so I don't think this will be the case for too much longer.
That is one heck of a shop. It is true what they say everything really is bigger in Texas!
Thanks for the kinds words and support! Of course w are biased but we think being in Texas is one of our best advantages - centrally located, low overhead, and growing tech & manufacturing industries.
As someone who is also starting a high-end printing shop for custom prints, etc. this is exciting to see a company grow so large and so quickly. You are a great inspiration and a solid basis for this industry as a whole. We need to bring back manufacturing to the US and other countries instead of relying on foreign manufacturers for everything. Great video, thanks for sharing.
Thanks Thom! We still have big plans but we are proud of how far we have come. Everything has been 100% organic and built from a team who has put in a lot of handwork. I don't mean to sound cheesy but I think this makes a big difference. Before we had a lot more automated equipment we had to does things the "manual" way - I think this leads to a lot of critical lessons learned and a greater appreciation. We are doing our best to how additive manufacturing is can compete with traditional over seas products. Thanks for your encouraging words and support. Please let us know if there is any way we can return the favor.
@@i-solids I hope you guys are really successful and can start doing Direct Metal Deposition 3D fab. It seems like a logical next step but a whole different level of engineering but you would already have a good foundation. I hope you give updates occasionally, it's great to see a homegrown business doing well because it helps give others the confidence to tread unknown waters.
Wow.. I am in shock. Your setup is amazing!! I was proud of my 9 printer farm, now I'm sad. LOL Great video
Thanks! Keeping 9 printers going is no easy task. What kind do you have? I think it was my 9th printer that caused me to start flipping the circuit breakers and encouraged us to take a bit of risk and rent out a small shop and from there things kept snowballing.
@@i-solids I Have 4 Prusa i3 MK3S+, 2 Prusa Mini, 3 Creality Cr-10. Your story is inspiring. I wish you the VERY best of luck! Keep up the great work.
Awesome! Glad to see this industry growing and in Texas as well!
Sweet setup! Thanks for the tour
This is inspiring as someone planning on starting a business it's interesting to see the scale and high end machines.
That's awesome! Please feel free to reach out it there is ever anything the can do to help.
So cool! An update video would be nice to see how far you have come
Love to see this. Hope to have success in the business too
Impressive looking shop.
AMAZING!!!!!! Great job friend!
Thanks for the tour. Great to see an Anycubic SLA printer in the mix with your Formlabs.
Thanks! The depth and performance of Formlabs material library is petty great but we are still a major proponents of the speed and cost of open source photopolymers. Its amazing the results you can get off of a printer that is just a few hundred bucks.
@@i-solids Agreed, my entire print farm is Anycubic, cost effective, cheaper, and easier to fix and repair. They also print like a boss!
Impressive, thank you so much for sharing. Very educational and inspiring video. Wish you all the best :)
Thanks so much for the support!
Great job!
Thanks for sharing.
Very inspiring, thank you for sharing. If you are looking for video ideas, I'd love to hear your story from your early days.
This is awesome thank you for doing this tour. I also live in Spring (surprisingly very close to you guys) and have a small 15 printer farm. Really awesome to see a company so close to me doing great things. Keep it up!
Thanks! We always enjoy visitors and chatting with other 3D printing enthusiast in case you are ever passing by.
@@i-solids As soon as I heard you say your location, I got excited. I am in Magnolia and make a run to Spring every week or so. Will definitely have to put you all on my list! I have a SLA and FDM printer which is what you would call a good start. 😁
That's awesome. Good work. It's good to see passionate people get ahead. I have a silly question because you have so many but do those Ender-3 covers let you print anything other than pla?
Abo is out and I hope to see more inside’s. Really would like to the all the aspects and learn from it.
What the heck. Y'all are right down the road from me. That's wild.
Good job!! Subbed
Thanks! We are hoping to be more consistent and put out more videos - mostly around cool projects or lessons learned.
I have a small product that is 3D printed and injected molded for other parts. You guys are demonstrating the power 3D manufacturing will have to American production and ingenuity. Bravo!
Thanks for the kind words and support! We are major advocates for the industry as a whole and its refreshing and encouraging to see many "competitors" often work together.
@@i-solids Agreed! 3D printing has allowed me to scale and pivot faster while still retaining injection molding for other parts that need the tried and tested manufacturing method. Looking forward to more videos from you guys.
Crazy to think that very recently I lived 5 minutes away from here.
so this is such a cool business but i noticed the lower on the product shelf I'm curious if there's issues with needing a FFL and having it sitting out like that
Nice observation! That was a non-functional display piece that is designed to look similar on the outside but everything is basically solid on the inside. Actually, that part was designed to just show off our Cerakote finishing options.
We do work quite a bit with sporting goods as is it a nice use case for production volume industrial 3D printing but we do have terms of service and have to turn away any firearm components that would be part of the firing system itself and of course any lowers specifically.
Most of what we produced are things like optic clamps, recoil pads, holsters and these are often sold B2B.
@i-SOLIDS: 3D Printing & Engineering I am wondering did you go with the flashforge replicator ? or is that another brand? What made you choose that printer for FDM?
Nice observation! We do have 64+ Flashforge printers within the FDM printer farm but they are modified a good bit to essentially make them more robust just to help with the number of hours we put on them. For example, we replace everything with all metal components, Micro Swiss hot ends, upgraded bearings, new electronics / firmware, etc.
What makes us slightly unique in comparison to some other farms is our top 4 materials are ABS, ASA, PETG, and TPU. PLA comes in around 5th. For this reason we like the Flashforge machines because they are fully enclosed to help reduce warping with materials that higher higher thermal expansion. An enclosure was a definitely requirement but we also like that they have a small footprint, have an open source firmware that we could modify, and they have a common direct drive extruder design so spare parts and upgrades are abundant.
@@i-solids
That makes sense, is there a reason you dont print with ASA? I have heard it is better than ABS...
I am trying to build up a farm as well been running into some issues with creality printers. I did have a flashforge like the model you have but it broke when I tried to bring it with me on an airplane. Hopefully I can find a more reliable setup moving forward, but dont have a budget yet for more flashforge printers.
Have you thought about expanding to a drier environment? Such as west Texas? (Abilene/Sweetwater) You wouldn't have near the trouble keeping hydroscopic materials dry!
Hey Tony,
The south Texas climate no doubt comes with some challenges. We do have a climate controlled shop with multiple AC units so we normally try to keep things between 30 to 40% RH and 70 to 80 degrees. On the really hot days with all the equipment running we have to monitor the environment a bit more and plan accordingly.
Humidity wise there is a fine balance because on the FDM side generally lower humidity is better but on the MJF side which is powder base some humidity is actually required. If the humidity is too low then the powder starts to generate more static which can cause some print quality and safety concerns. Many shops in more dry climates commonly have to use humidifiers to increase the humidity.
On the FDM print farm we normally consume filament at rate fast enough that most common materials like PLA, ABS, and PETG aren’t affected - for instance a 1KG material normally only last abouts 48 hours before it is completely used. On average we consume between 500 and 700 kg per month. For more advanced polymers that tend to be extremely hygroscopic like PA12, Ultem, and PEEK we store them in a industrial dry box that keeps the humidity below 1%. Prior to printing with these materials we can also “bake” the filament to make sure it’s fully dry. The industrial FDM printers all have sealed filament storage to keep the material in good condition while printing.
www.essentium.com/product/essentium-drybox-db270/
Overall in a strange way the humidity in our region can strangely be a good thing since it allows us to keep the overall environment at a nice level suitable for MJF technology and we can control the individual requirements for FDM on a more micro scale.
I apologize for the lengthy response, I thought this was a really great question.
@@i-solids Thank you very much! I've been into 3d printing for about 7 years, at work I'm the go to guy. We have 2 printers where I work (Mainly for prototyping) We have thought about getting another powder printer from HP, but decided it costs too much. Personally I currently have 6 printers not counting the Bambu Labs X1 carbon combo on the way and currently setting up a RatRig V-Core3 400mm. Delta, Cartesian, and core xy experience. When the high school gets their technology dept going with 3d printers, my work will send me over there to give them a hand and to teach a little.
What Material are those AR lower receivers made from?
Are those creator pro’s?
so sick yall have a dope as shit farm
How do you go about finding customers to manufacture for?
please upload more videos
How do you get the clients? What’s the marketing like?
You kinda missed putting a link to your business in the video details. Unless that's against ToA or somthing. Nice farm.
They are printing top secret items. I didn't actually see anything printing there perhaps they are making meth underground
Thats INSANE lol so cool
What printer is your fdm that you have the most of. Would you buy them again.
A lot of our FDM print farm is based on the "tried and true" legacy MakerBot or FlashForge Creator Pro style printer but each one is heavily modified - not necessarily with more "features" but with just upgraded components that are better suited for the heavy use environment and slightly more complex materials like PA12 and ASA. We also have some custom firmware and an additional software layer for production planning.
Although these printers are great for our environment these may not necessarily be the ones we would recommend for other users - we place a big priority on reliability more than any other criteria. For example, auto-leveling has gotten to be very impressive over the past few years but at scale even just an extra 5 minutes per print job then this can equate to several hours of non-production time.
@@i-solids thank you for sharing your knowledge.
@@i-solids Thank you for sharing that information, just wanted to point out that modern 3d printer firmware can be set up to store the mesh, so you could only run the mesh leveling sequence once a week to minimize the impact on throughput. I really enjoyed the video and the mixture of different additive technologies you are using is very impressive!
dope
I’m still trying to get past the 50% failure rate with this used Ender 3 Pro that I’ve put several hundred dollars worth of upgrades into trying to get it ready for ABS and Cf-nylon.
Tried an enclosure? I'm just about to make one for my printer for printing that...keep getting warped prints
You will buy prusa xl automated print farm. They vertically organixed. Less space.
Actually there farm printers are not XL ones. They are really small.
@@lazyman1011 No People. Automated farm. th-cam.com/video/uLMRAC2zJJA/w-d-xo.html
I love to see i-SOLIDS going viral!
What is your most reliable printer?
This might be a little bit unfair comparison but the HP MJF 5210 is probably the most reliable printer we have - of course with the price tag associated with these industrial powder based printers I would definitely not expect any thing less.
On the FDM side of things we really like the original CR-10S and actually prefer it to a lot of newer machines with more features. However this probably wouldn't be my top pick for a personal 3D printer since our needs might be a little unique at this scale. For example, the original CR10S had a separate electronics control box which means there is a bunch of wires exposed and it has an outdated display compared to most modern printers with nice touch screen interfaces. For my own printer I would prefer the nicer looking and more feature rich interface but with a large volume of printers having a separate electronics enclosures allows us to have spares available so that we can swap things out quickly to prevent downtime.
With a bit larger budget we have found that the Markforged printers are amazingly reliable for FDM.
are you guys currently hiring?
Man, what I'd give for a setup like this😩
1 millions dollars might get the lights turned on
How much is your electric bill? :>
On average we use about 30,000 kWh per month!
Give your employees some chairs.
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this should be a crime wasting all that power you want to make parts how bout this doing the old tried and true method every big company uses moldings
Very cool to see all the machines you're using. If I find myself down near you, I'd love a tour!