Dimension Elite 3D Printer Review
In the last topic about 3d printing, I promised to review the Dimension Elite printer. It's time to keep promises.
In a series of random events I was lucky to get into some organization, one might even say, to participate in its development. It turned out that a designated printer appeared above us and a person from the Moscow branch of Dimension taught me to use it. Now it's my turn to tell you something about him.
Like everything, you should start with the characteristics:
')
As you can see, such a small working volume requires a very small and heavy box. It so happened, as it seems to me, due to two factors: the presence of rather massive mechanisms for moving the table up / down and moving the print head in two dimensions. Plus, the printing technology requires heating the working chamber volume to as high as 75 degrees, which, in general, is not small. All this requires not the weakest power supply. If you believe more manufacturer documentation, the printer consumes about 1.5 kW / h. Well, like any heater, it heats the space around very well. In the summer it is quite difficult to stay in the same room.
Attention, inside a large number of images, be careful!
Look at the handsome
Solid, infection. Below you can see 2 cartridges, later you will see them. The printer is equipped with a darkened glass door through which the printing process is perfectly visible. Before you open the door and see what's inside, you need to say that the printer connects to the PC via the Ethernet interface.
It's time to open the door. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to disassemble it completely to savor the details of the design, but there's nothing you can do about it, dear :)
So, in the upper right corner we observe the print head. The head is tricky and has 2 nozzles: one for feeding the support material, the second for feeding the base material. In the waiting state, the head is on the “base”, hanging over the metal brushes and the waste collection box. The plastic pellets fall into this box, the head drops them there, gently rubbing itself on a metal brush. But, in general, there is not a lot of garbage, the box has never been packed even by a third. To the left of the box, the runners and the mechanism for moving the working table are visible, a removable backing is fixed on the table. By the way, here it is closer:
The cap from the lens with a filter diameter of 52 mm, so to compare the scale. The substrate is divided into sections to make it easier for the printer software to place parts on it. And, although the manufacturer guarantees the quality only on new substrates, we use our own until victory, until we completely scratch them. I do not see anything bad in this.
Let's talk about cartridges. Yes, you understood correctly, we can’t just put a couple of plastic coils into the printer and forget about them for a couple of months. The manufacturer came up with cartridges. And not simple, inside they have some kind of electronics, which transmits information to the printer about the remaining amount of plastic inside. Take a closer look at them.
The first cartridge with the main print material:
As you can see, we have a gentle milky color, or, as the manufacturer says, ivory. The box is like a box, only the wire sometimes escapes inside and I have many, many hemorrhoids to pick it out from there. The design, for my taste, is not very successful.
Second cartridge with support material:
The material is quite mysterious, not only is it brown and brittle, it is also soluble in alkaline solution.
Having loaded the cartridges and the substrate into the printer, it's time to close the door in it and sit down at the computer to prepare the models for printing.
Software is proudly called CatalystEX. Honestly, I did not understand whether it is free or not. And I did not find anything in Google, except for the old version. The interface is simple and intuitive to anyone who has ever seen any 3D editor. In order not to look at the naked editor, I will show you a little man in it.
The General tab allows you to select the layer thickness, object construction mode (monolithic, large or small cells), the algorithm, the construction of supports and the scale.
On the Orientation tab, you can specify which of the surfaces will be at the bottom / top, and change the view mode of the model. By pressing the Process STL button (and the software understands the model ONLY in the STL format), we get a beautiful layer cake that shows what the model will look like after printing.
I can not draw an analogy of support for the eyes of our little man and with this character from the Split Space (or Fly Trip'a)
Yes, the printer is so cunning that it can even pause printing in a certain layer. For example, we make a part with a space for a bearing, you can stop printing, put the bearing on its rightful place and bury it tightly in plastic. There is one restriction; it cannot be higher (that is, not sticking out) of the upper part of the model being manufactured.
Having prepared the model, click the Add To Pack button and get into the third tab:
It is possible to place the model on the substrate, see how much material and time it takes to print, and make copies, if needed. Print! The first time I pressed the cherished button, I waited for the printer to show signs of life. In vain I waited until you press a button on the printer's case; nothing will happen. Those. you can’t print from home via RDP, you need to be near the printer, and this is sad.
After that, you can go to the Printer Services tab and see all the logs. My favorite is the heat log, it shows the current and desired temperature:
The Printer Status tab is the most uninteresting, it shows a table with models and cartridge volume before and after printing, therefore there will be no screenshot.
As can be seen from the table above, the printing process is not at all quick, unfortunately. The printer is noisy during operation, but not very loud. Several photos of the work process:
And the video. The author is true, took it off and left, and only then I realized that it is vertical, for which he apologizes.
Returning in the morning, I pulled out the substrate with the models. The ship, however, failed, which once again confirms the rule: do not take ready-made models from the Internet, nothing good will come of it.
It is time to wash off the substrate material. This is done in a separate chamber (for some reason I call it a stove) such a construction
There you need to pour a little more than 30 liters of water, pour 7-8 bags of solvent and turn it on for 2-4 hours to work. The solvent is this:
In closed form:
And in the open:
Bags remind something ...
Soaking the details, you can see the result:
I found some more ready-made models at home, incl. and a couple of them, round from which were visible in the photo of the substrate above
On this, I think, a small review can be considered complete. I am waiting for comments, and I ask you to report on errors and oche in a personal message. See you!
Intro
In a series of random events I was lucky to get into some organization, one might even say, to participate in its development. It turned out that a designated printer appeared above us and a person from the Moscow branch of Dimension taught me to use it. Now it's my turn to tell you something about him.
The main thing
Like everything, you should start with the characteristics:
| Size of construction area: L × W × H | 203 mm × 203 mm × 305 mm |
| Layer thickness | 0.174 mm / 0.254 mm |
| Print modes | customizable (layer thickness, material occupancy of the model, support building algorithm) |
| Growing speed | 15 cm³ / hour |
| Dimensions: D × W × H | 686 mm × 914 mm × 1041 mm |
| Device weight (unpacked) | 136 kg |
')
As you can see, such a small working volume requires a very small and heavy box. It so happened, as it seems to me, due to two factors: the presence of rather massive mechanisms for moving the table up / down and moving the print head in two dimensions. Plus, the printing technology requires heating the working chamber volume to as high as 75 degrees, which, in general, is not small. All this requires not the weakest power supply. If you believe more manufacturer documentation, the printer consumes about 1.5 kW / h. Well, like any heater, it heats the space around very well. In the summer it is quite difficult to stay in the same room.
Attention, inside a large number of images, be careful!
Look at the handsome
Solid, infection. Below you can see 2 cartridges, later you will see them. The printer is equipped with a darkened glass door through which the printing process is perfectly visible. Before you open the door and see what's inside, you need to say that the printer connects to the PC via the Ethernet interface.
Inside the burrow
It's time to open the door. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to disassemble it completely to savor the details of the design, but there's nothing you can do about it, dear :)
So, in the upper right corner we observe the print head. The head is tricky and has 2 nozzles: one for feeding the support material, the second for feeding the base material. In the waiting state, the head is on the “base”, hanging over the metal brushes and the waste collection box. The plastic pellets fall into this box, the head drops them there, gently rubbing itself on a metal brush. But, in general, there is not a lot of garbage, the box has never been packed even by a third. To the left of the box, the runners and the mechanism for moving the working table are visible, a removable backing is fixed on the table. By the way, here it is closer:
The cap from the lens with a filter diameter of 52 mm, so to compare the scale. The substrate is divided into sections to make it easier for the printer software to place parts on it. And, although the manufacturer guarantees the quality only on new substrates, we use our own until victory, until we completely scratch them. I do not see anything bad in this.
Let's talk about cartridges. Yes, you understood correctly, we can’t just put a couple of plastic coils into the printer and forget about them for a couple of months. The manufacturer came up with cartridges. And not simple, inside they have some kind of electronics, which transmits information to the printer about the remaining amount of plastic inside. Take a closer look at them.
The first cartridge with the main print material:
As you can see, we have a gentle milky color, or, as the manufacturer says, ivory. The box is like a box, only the wire sometimes escapes inside and I have many, many hemorrhoids to pick it out from there. The design, for my taste, is not very successful.
Second cartridge with support material:
The material is quite mysterious, not only is it brown and brittle, it is also soluble in alkaline solution.
Having loaded the cartridges and the substrate into the printer, it's time to close the door in it and sit down at the computer to prepare the models for printing.
Software is proudly called CatalystEX. Honestly, I did not understand whether it is free or not. And I did not find anything in Google, except for the old version. The interface is simple and intuitive to anyone who has ever seen any 3D editor. In order not to look at the naked editor, I will show you a little man in it.
The General tab allows you to select the layer thickness, object construction mode (monolithic, large or small cells), the algorithm, the construction of supports and the scale.
On the Orientation tab, you can specify which of the surfaces will be at the bottom / top, and change the view mode of the model. By pressing the Process STL button (and the software understands the model ONLY in the STL format), we get a beautiful layer cake that shows what the model will look like after printing.
I can not draw an analogy of support for the eyes of our little man and with this character from the Split Space (or Fly Trip'a)
Analogy
Yes, the printer is so cunning that it can even pause printing in a certain layer. For example, we make a part with a space for a bearing, you can stop printing, put the bearing on its rightful place and bury it tightly in plastic. There is one restriction; it cannot be higher (that is, not sticking out) of the upper part of the model being manufactured.
Having prepared the model, click the Add To Pack button and get into the third tab:
It is possible to place the model on the substrate, see how much material and time it takes to print, and make copies, if needed. Print! The first time I pressed the cherished button, I waited for the printer to show signs of life. In vain I waited until you press a button on the printer's case; nothing will happen. Those. you can’t print from home via RDP, you need to be near the printer, and this is sad.
After that, you can go to the Printer Services tab and see all the logs. My favorite is the heat log, it shows the current and desired temperature:
The Printer Status tab is the most uninteresting, it shows a table with models and cartridge volume before and after printing, therefore there will be no screenshot.
As can be seen from the table above, the printing process is not at all quick, unfortunately. The printer is noisy during operation, but not very loud. Several photos of the work process:
And the video. The author is true, took it off and left, and only then I realized that it is vertical, for which he apologizes.
Returning in the morning, I pulled out the substrate with the models. The ship, however, failed, which once again confirms the rule: do not take ready-made models from the Internet, nothing good will come of it.
It is time to wash off the substrate material. This is done in a separate chamber (for some reason I call it a stove) such a construction
There you need to pour a little more than 30 liters of water, pour 7-8 bags of solvent and turn it on for 2-4 hours to work. The solvent is this:
In closed form:
And in the open:
Bags remind something ...
Soaking the details, you can see the result:
I found some more ready-made models at home, incl. and a couple of them, round from which were visible in the photo of the substrate above
On this, I think, a small review can be considered complete. I am waiting for comments, and I ask you to report on errors and oche in a personal message. See you!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/170621/
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