Great video. The puzzle really looks great compared to the results I've seen on the Forum. How significant is the price difference between those two puzzles? Could you give us a price comparison? Beside that, congrats on 99 subscribers ;) Your content is really high-quality!
Thanks Dario :) I won't say exactly how much, but getting this printed in SLS would have cost me more than 50% more, as opposed to MJF. That's just i.Materialise, though. Sculpteo right now has the same price on the MJF and SLS, except they allow an "Economy" price for SLS which actually makes it cheaper. And for me, Shapeways is always the more expensive of the three.
Wow, that is indeed a good discount. So MJF puzzles are kind of affordable? Because in my opinion the classical SLS service is way too expensive. Another question: MJF is just a material and not a different kind of additive manufacturing, right? I got a bit confused with you talking about SLS OR MJF as I thought SLS is the method. But you mean the traditional nylon with sls, don't you?
I'd say that it's "kind of affordable" in the same way that SLS is "kind of affordable", in the sense that it's very expensive in the eyes of people who know nothing about puzzles, but very cheap to me. :) Sculpteo SLS in "Economy" pricing is also very cheap, if you're looking to get things printed. No, MJF is not just the material, it's the process. Both puzzles in the video are nylon, but slightly different nylons. The SLS process is where the machine lays down one layer of powder at a time, and then melts (or "sinters") the powder in specific places using a laser. MJF, as far as I know, uses a binding agent dispersed from a print head to fuse the plastic together. The build chamber is hot, but the plastic is not fused only with the heat. HP makes 2D paper printers, and the resolution on those 2D print heads far exceeds the resolution of any cheap enough laser, so as far as I know they use that type of print head to lay down the binding agent "ink" as if each layer is being printed in a 2D paper printer, but it's in a 3D printer.
:D So cheap is expensive in normal-people's eyes. Interesting. I didn't know of that process. The thing you are describing reminds me of 3D-printing (the only additive manufacturing process that is actually called that name) but I've only seen it with other materials such as wood or ceramics. Still I'm surprised that laser sintering is more expensive...
When I say "cheap", I mean that it's cheap given what it actually is. To most people, if I pay even $25 for some 3D printed piece of plastic, that's way too expensive, but for me that would be the deal of a lifetime. It's all about your perspective. SLS and MJF are both different types of 3D printing, so I'm glad they remind you of 3D printing. :) Actually, "3D printing" is the other name given to all processes that are technically called "additive manufacturing", as far as I know. If you start out with nothing, and then slowly build up your final object, that is 3D printing. You might be thinking of the particular kind of printer you have, which is called FDM or FFF.
Did you find that there were some surfaces raised up and others sunken in on the MJF puzzle? I found this issue to be very prominent when I had a puzzle printed in this material from Shapeways.
I was really expecting that to be the case, but as far as I can tell there were so issues like that, at least nothing major enough to notice. I print the puzzle almost exactly as it's assembled, and I thought that the bottom faces would have had issues, being parallel to the print bed, but there was nothing. One thing is that the MJF version seems to have a very slightly convex bottom face, to the point where it spins very well. This doesn't happen with the SLS version. But the reason might be from the fit of the pieces overall rather than any raised or sunken faces. I wonder why my results were very different from yours and others' though. Could it be that Materialise has calibrated their printers better? Or maybe it's the wall thickness of the parts. I shell them very thin, at only 0.8mm. I know that some people like a thicker wall. I found that 0.8mm in MJF feels twice as rigid as the same thickness in SLS though, so I see no need to go thicker. How thick were the walls of the puzzle you printed?
If I remember correctly mine were 1mm thick, but I'd have to check the part file. Also, something I noticed was that the surfaces which had this artifact were all in one direction and parallel to each other; one set of sides all had raised faces while the opposing ones had sunken faces. I'd be really surprised if 0.2mm makes all the difference.
Interesting. I also doubt that the 0.2mm would have made a significant difference, although it's still possible. Were all the parallel faces on the plane of the build plate? I think other people have only experienced the problem with faces that were printed parallel to the build plate. Also, when did you order the puzzle? Maybe you got yours much before I got mine, and the machines have since been better tuned to address the issue.
The faces were indeed parallel to the build plate; I just find it interesting that it occurred on all the faces. But yeah, it's totally likely that Shapeways (and i.materialise) have worked out the kinks by now. After all, I was one of their original testers and as a result was not getting a final version of the expected print quality.
Great video. The puzzle really looks great compared to the results I've seen on the Forum. How significant is the price difference between those two puzzles? Could you give us a price comparison?
Beside that, congrats on 99 subscribers ;) Your content is really high-quality!
Thanks Dario :)
I won't say exactly how much, but getting this printed in SLS would have cost me more than 50% more, as opposed to MJF. That's just i.Materialise, though. Sculpteo right now has the same price on the MJF and SLS, except they allow an "Economy" price for SLS which actually makes it cheaper. And for me, Shapeways is always the more expensive of the three.
Wow, that is indeed a good discount. So MJF puzzles are kind of affordable? Because in my opinion the classical SLS service is way too expensive.
Another question: MJF is just a material and not a different kind of additive manufacturing, right? I got a bit confused with you talking about SLS OR MJF as I thought SLS is the method. But you mean the traditional nylon with sls, don't you?
I'd say that it's "kind of affordable" in the same way that SLS is "kind of affordable", in the sense that it's very expensive in the eyes of people who know nothing about puzzles, but very cheap to me. :) Sculpteo SLS in "Economy" pricing is also very cheap, if you're looking to get things printed.
No, MJF is not just the material, it's the process. Both puzzles in the video are nylon, but slightly different nylons. The SLS process is where the machine lays down one layer of powder at a time, and then melts (or "sinters") the powder in specific places using a laser. MJF, as far as I know, uses a binding agent dispersed from a print head to fuse the plastic together. The build chamber is hot, but the plastic is not fused only with the heat. HP makes 2D paper printers, and the resolution on those 2D print heads far exceeds the resolution of any cheap enough laser, so as far as I know they use that type of print head to lay down the binding agent "ink" as if each layer is being printed in a 2D paper printer, but it's in a 3D printer.
:D So cheap is expensive in normal-people's eyes.
Interesting. I didn't know of that process. The thing you are describing reminds me of 3D-printing (the only additive manufacturing process that is actually called that name) but I've only seen it with other materials such as wood or ceramics. Still I'm surprised that laser sintering is more expensive...
When I say "cheap", I mean that it's cheap given what it actually is. To most people, if I pay even $25 for some 3D printed piece of plastic, that's way too expensive, but for me that would be the deal of a lifetime. It's all about your perspective.
SLS and MJF are both different types of 3D printing, so I'm glad they remind you of 3D printing. :) Actually, "3D printing" is the other name given to all processes that are technically called "additive manufacturing", as far as I know. If you start out with nothing, and then slowly build up your final object, that is 3D printing. You might be thinking of the particular kind of printer you have, which is called FDM or FFF.
Did you find that there were some surfaces raised up and others sunken in on the MJF puzzle? I found this issue to be very prominent when I had a puzzle printed in this material from Shapeways.
I was really expecting that to be the case, but as far as I can tell there were so issues like that, at least nothing major enough to notice. I print the puzzle almost exactly as it's assembled, and I thought that the bottom faces would have had issues, being parallel to the print bed, but there was nothing. One thing is that the MJF version seems to have a very slightly convex bottom face, to the point where it spins very well. This doesn't happen with the SLS version. But the reason might be from the fit of the pieces overall rather than any raised or sunken faces.
I wonder why my results were very different from yours and others' though. Could it be that Materialise has calibrated their printers better? Or maybe it's the wall thickness of the parts. I shell them very thin, at only 0.8mm. I know that some people like a thicker wall. I found that 0.8mm in MJF feels twice as rigid as the same thickness in SLS though, so I see no need to go thicker.
How thick were the walls of the puzzle you printed?
OMG!!! My 2 fav youcubers together and Ben when will be your next video
If I remember correctly mine were 1mm thick, but I'd have to check the part file. Also, something I noticed was that the surfaces which had this artifact were all in one direction and parallel to each other; one set of sides all had raised faces while the opposing ones had sunken faces. I'd be really surprised if 0.2mm makes all the difference.
Interesting. I also doubt that the 0.2mm would have made a significant difference, although it's still possible. Were all the parallel faces on the plane of the build plate? I think other people have only experienced the problem with faces that were printed parallel to the build plate.
Also, when did you order the puzzle? Maybe you got yours much before I got mine, and the machines have since been better tuned to address the issue.
The faces were indeed parallel to the build plate; I just find it interesting that it occurred on all the faces. But yeah, it's totally likely that Shapeways (and i.materialise) have worked out the kinks by now. After all, I was one of their original testers and as a result was not getting a final version of the expected print quality.