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Video HYREL 3-D Printers Were Developed by 3-D Printer Users (Video) 55

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HYREL 3-D had a display Timothy spotted at last month's Maker Faire Atlanta. They're not trying to hustle Kickstarter donors; they exceeded their $50,000 goal by over $100,000. Their main pitch was (and still is) that they are making high-reliability 3-D printers that can run many hours without breaking. Project spokesperson Daniel Hutchison says he and other people he knows who were making prototypes and short-run parts in the Atlanta area were continually disappointed by the poor reliability of available 3-D printers, which is why they decided to make their own. Open Source? Somewhat, partially, kind of... but they have a bunch of proprietary secret sauce in their software, too. Daniel goes into this in more detail in the video, so there's no need for us to repeat his words when you can hear them (or read them in the transcript) for yourself. (Alternate Video Link)

Tim: Dan, with your at Maker Faire New York line up, you are with Hyrel 3D, now explain Hyrel, what’s the background of Hyrel as a company?

Dan: Hyrel actually started based upon our needs and we came from a semiconductor industry. We were looking to make a 3D for our – and in this case get a 3D printer to make the parts that we needed for our semiconductor products. And the kits that we bought, the machines that we bought just kept on falling apart. And because we were machine builders, we said, well, we do wait for aligning, we do frontend fab kind of stuff and we had all of the technology already available. So, we said, well, why not just go ahead and take this and apply this to our own 3D printer.

Tim: If you are going to be making the parts anyway, sure?

Dan: Exactly. So, we over weekend started making and bringing these things together and we realized very quickly because we started getting a lot of people out there asking us questions, hey are there other 3D printers companies out there that can make something that’s reliable, that’s going to last not for one year, not for like three to four prints, but something that’s going to last for a long time. Our products have been in semiconductor industry for the past 15 to 20 years working flawlessly, so we said to ourselves well, we have a lot of technology, we have a lot of experience, and let’s put this one together. So we did.

Tim: So you got one right to your side there. Talk about some of those components, what makes a printer because it sounds like they are driving the ethos of what you are doing, reliability. What can make a 3D printer more or less reliable?

Dan: That’s a great question. Things that make it much more reliable definitely has to do with the actual design and it has to do with all of the individual components that come together. If you have something that is, let's say, less precise, then you are only going to be able to get as good as that less precise. You are only as strong as your weakest link. So, we went with the premium quality rails. These rails that you see right here, we went with IKO and IKO for semiconductor products, we have been using these guys for the past 15, 20 years, they’ve never failed on us, not a single one. And these are in fabs, for semiconductor fabs all around the world and they’ve been running and operating 24/7. And we’ve just been tickled to death by the fact that they’ve just been solid and working great. They are a lot more expensive than all the other rails that are out there but they are worth it because of that. Also we use a ball screw in the back here, but you can’t see here, but if I were to take this guy and turn him, we use a precision ground German machine ball screw. On top of that.

Tim: Not an eBay part?

Dan: No, no, definitely, not an eBay part. But on top of that we also have our own electronics. We think Arduino is great. We think what they are doing is fantastic. For what we were wanting to do which was to integrate a full canbus inside of our own electronics, we needed to have more horsepower.

Tim: Explain the canbus?

Dan: Okay. A canbus is a controller area network bus, and a canbus by itself, you typically find these particular items in a car and they run and operate – all the electronics that you find inside the car are there because they’re robust and reliable. We wanted to have connections. We wanted to have everything inside of our own machines so that they will be running and operating for many, many years to come. And if they are good enough for a car, they are good enough definitely for a machine like this.

Tim: Can you talk about the open source or non-open source nature of a lot of the 3D printers are extremely open-source oriented. Explain where you fit into that world?

Dan: In the open source world we have used a lot of the open source products that are out there in order for us to learn and we think that they have done a wonderful job. We love what the open source community has done. In a lot different ways we've continuously contributed back to the open source community by giving them snippets of what we have our code base wise. Now there are certain things we cannot give out, such as our own firmware which we built from the ground up. And another reason why we don’t do that is because it’s not compatible with an Arduino and if someone were to tweak our firmware in such a fashion that would not be congruent to what’s there. Not only will the magic smoke come out, but someone will get hurt. So we've kept that particular part of our system closed.

Now anyone if they wanted to can go out there and copy any machine that they see. It’s not that difficult. If you got a pair of calipers and if you got some free time, you are probably going to be able to make some headway into making your own very quickly. You know what, more power to you.You are learning, you are building, you are making, that’s awesome. But on the other side of the open source, we have our own extruder heads that this particular board that you see right here we are going to be opening up and allowing people to take and learn a little bit more about how to operate this kind of stuff inside of the canbus. This comes with an stm-32 103 state of the art chip for the low-end, also has a motor driver chip, so you can heat stuff up, you can actually control fans, lights or whatever you want to with this and we are going to be giving away the kernel to this, so you can actually develop whatever projects you want to on this. We also develop other particular heads for other people depending upon their applications. If they want to keep it closed source, we will be more than happy to keep it closed source for them. They don’t want to give this out to the rest of the world that’s okay too. They want to open source and push it out to the rest of the world, you know what? The world is your oyster.

Tim: You are also making printheads?

Dan: I am sorry?

Tim: You are also making printheads?.

Dan: That is correct. The software development kit is currently available for this and if you wanted to develop your own heads for your own machine, you can definitely do that too.

Tim: Talk just for a minute about this machine you got front here?

Dan: Yes.

Tim: This is very posh looking machine for a piece of prototype lab equipment and you have space for two reels here, and it looks like I understand from you... you’ve got room for more reels down here if you want to?

Dan: Yes, more reels down here on that side and also on the opposite side and this is our second generation. So this is the very first. This is unit number one of second generation. We are debuting for the very first time here at the Atlanta Maker Faire and we extremely proud of this machine. This is the high roll system 30M, that is correct, M as in metric because we are using all metric parts. All this technology that we have in here also is in our new engines as well. So it’s a second generation of the engines as well and this is the very first time that’s been debuted too.

Tim: Before we opening you can have a four head printer in that?

Dan: Yes. You can have up to four individual components in here or mix and match however you so desire. If you want to be able to do not just filaments, if you wanted to do like a porcelain or emulsifiable or a paste or a Sugru or a chocolate, even a polyurethane or all those other types of materials, we are willing to work with anyone who has those materials and create the technology necessary for them to be successful and we love doing that kind of stuff.

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HYREL 3-D Printers Were Developed by 3-D Printer Users (Video)

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    They are indeed reliable and opensource, at least opensource enough so you can repair whatever breaks in day-to-day usage.

  • What's missing with all these low-cost printers is a management team that can actually plan ahead, maintain inventory, and ship when you order. I hate the idea of having to pay a deposit, get on the waiting list, then (hopefully) get it a month or two later. Why don't they build inventory before flaunting their wares?

    I ordered an Ez3D Phoenix back in May, got asked to pay the remaining half of the invoice in September, and still haven't gotten it. Fortunately it wasn't expensive. Otherwise I'd be tempted to

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      buy through amazon.

      anyhoo, there's plenty of 3d printer kits on the market that are well known designs, with 20 sources for the parts, that are shipping in a day or two of ordering. basically you're waiting 6 months to save 100 bucks(usual price for a prusa i3 kit nowadays it seems is ez3d + 100 bucks..).

  • Please don't use the Sony Vegas soundtracks anymore. I've heard them so much in my own editing I'm ready to throw up green vomit.
  • he and other people he knows who were making prototypes and short-run parts in the Atlanta area were continually disappointed by the poor reliability of available 3-D printers, which is why they decided to make their own.

    This is exactly why I've waited years to purchase a 3D printer even though I really want one.
    I'm going to wait another 5 years before the prices are right, and the usability is where it should be.
  • by thatkid_2002 ( 1529917 ) on Thursday November 13, 2014 @08:21PM (#48382983)

    A cartesian (like RepRap Mendel or this HYREL) based design always rattles itself apart and has very high stress on parts which increases as print speed increases. A SCARA (RepRap Morgan) or Delta (RepRap Rostock) have far lower stresses involved and shock from head movement is shared among multiple axis which decreases resistance/absorption problems and allows for higher print speeds.

    They go on about design, and yet they failed to analyze what was the root cause of the faiures and opted to apply bandaids instead.

    • by floodo1 ( 246910 )
      If you're going to talk about design and machines rattling themselves apart then you might look to the design of mills for cutting metal.
    • by delt0r ( 999393 )
      Normal mechanical design can and does easily deal with this. You may not be able to make it fast with 8020 and crappy 3d printed plastic. But you get what you pay for.
      • The same approach could be applied to a SCARA or Delta design for better results again - and likely still be cheaper.
        • by delt0r ( 999393 )
          There is a reason high end machines rarely have these designs. Its not because all the engineers working on it are stupid either. When you get down to the details that matter, like getting .01mm repeatably, vibration and flexure analisis. Basic Cartesian systems win out over large numbers of joins and hinges. The few machines that have been developed are not better nor are they cheaper. Which is why there really are not many of them.
  • This thing was funded and supposedly delivered almost two years ago. Let's hear from people who have one.

  • by mark_reh ( 2015546 ) on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:37PM (#48383717) Journal

    It seems their idea of reliability is mainly based on the lifetime of the machine, which I get, but the real reliability problem with FDM printers isn't machine longevity, but the ability to start a print and know it will finish. My machine is built using 8020 frame- no laser cut plywood, and no 3D printed parts in the structure of the machine. I have been working to eliminate reliability problems from the beginning because I want to print full size human skulls from CT scans. Such prints take anywhere from 24-48 hours. The extruder has been the #1 reliability problem- it usually has some problem about 15 hours or so into the print. I've also had some problems with filament tangling on the spool. Slicing software has problems that occur with some STL files and not others.

    CAN buses are nice, but I'm not sure that does much unless youre setting up a shop with 20 machines on a network. Show me an extruder than can run without fail for 48 hours at a time and I'll throw some money at it.

    • by delt0r ( 999393 )
      Right now the stereolithography method has become much more viable for this sort of thing. The UV curing resins are now much cheaper and are comparable in price to to plastics used in FDM machines. With modern UV LEDs or laser didoes and a over simpler mechanical construction as well as better resolution. Personally i am looking at making one with a hacked tablet and a UV led array.

      Commercial models are still a bit pricey. But the DIY market is starting to get stuck in.
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  • I thought they'd created a 3-D printer using a 3-D printer.

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.

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