dual extrusion test prints and listed capabilities would be interesting too, as well as flexible materials.
@Jared_Eldredge I will add the normal, high quality, and high speed test prints to our list of features. I doubt it will be a first rollout thing, but offering customers the option of working with Makers who can get prints done faster, albeit with less accuracy, should show customers that speed isn’t always a good thing. I can run my Taz 6 with a Moarstruder at 90mm/s with 1.0mm layers but even PLA warps at that extrusion temp and speed lol!
As for our test print it is still something that I am really struggling with. We want it to be as iconic as the Benchy while also representing our company and the Maker community alike.
@Grant_Posner
I’m a fan of Astroprint (though wish I could slice with cura 3.x online) and suspect they might be interested in participating here a bit. it would be tough to REQUIRE hubs pros to use AstroPrint, but there are free account options…
I’d love to see some interaction between the order-build-deliver flow and my AstroPrint controller. if this was baked in to the system, it could enable some form of authenticity verification of test prints:
the test process could require automated, remote control and monitoring of the printer. the pro could hit a button on the website saying “I’m ready to print my test” and the website could send the print command to the astrobox. it could include monitoring via the astrobox webcam to prove that the printer is really there and really printing at that moment. the slicer settings could be probably verified too including speed, layer height, temp, etc. finally the resultant print can be observed via the web cam (low res, yeah, but it process the printer didn’t just spit out a giant blob of nothing).
the above wouldn’t be free, it would cost cost something to implement. butt it could be worthwhile.
AstroPrint also has APIs to enable designs to be submitted into the system, sliced, and printed without giving access to the STL itself. that could be interesting for some customers. (see their demo app called “toymaker”).
the platform isn’t perfect but it’s seems worth looking into.
also, it seems strange to list some features as a generic machine feature. e.g. nozzle size. I’ve got a drawer full of nozzles - my printer shipped with 0.4mm installed, but I could easily screw on any size nozzle… if a customer really needs accurate fine details I’ll screw on a smaller nozzle (or more likely swap to a spare hotend with that nozzle already installed - I hate risking damage to the heatbreak if it’s not absoluty necessary)
same goes for heated bed: I have an aftermarket keenovo 750 watt heater that can reach 200C in 5 minutes… but the 24v board in my printer couldn’t pump enough current to do the same… so what do I put in the table?
who is the table for? customers (folks ordering printed parts) or pros (folks doing the printing)?
if for customers: many of these details won’t matter or will be project specific (max bed temp or nozzle size, respectively)
if for pros: many of these details should be listed as high water marks, what’s POSSIBLE with the printer, not what happens to be installed. (e.g. range of nozzles that work on stock hotend, whether the printer can control a heated bed with stock electronics and what voltage/current it can provide, etc). some details like max bed temp are anecdotal: two identical printers in different environments will have different max bed temps if the ambient temperature, humidity, etc are different.
@Jared_Eldredge In regards to Astroprint, I have personally never used it and I would guess I am not alone there. It is something we can look into but this will be a long ways away in terms of a roll out. This would require weeks of custom code to implement. All my printers (minus the full color) run on SD cards. It is reliable and predictable. Your comment was flagged as spam, not sure why, but I reinstated it so I could reply directly. We are not ready to endorse any slicing software, especially with the massive changes Cura has made (for the better I think). What you are asking for requires everyone to have this system and just isn’t viable.
We have a system in place for dealing with customer issues, so if someone orders a high quality print and receives one that is more for speed then we will manually check it here to verify (at our expense). This ensures the best customer service possible. If there is a Maker attempting to con customers, other Makers, or any of us at My 3D Pros they will be perma-banned. We will not stand for people that do not follow the rules (with rule #1 being Don’t be a dick). People that mislead customers hurt not only themselves but the industry as a whole. We all suffer when someone who does not know what they are doing tries to do something they cannot. Education is important and something we will be working towards in the future as the videos and such take a very long time to produce.
@Jared_Eldredge The table is a knowledge base for us and anyone who wants to look at it. There is way more information on there than necessary. Someone else added the bed temp one.
My hope was that people would add stock printers so we could build a list, but many are adding their custom machines that really do not help the list, which is fine for documentation, but difficult for us on the website side.
If you have nozzles available we will allow you to state that
I have from 0.3 to 1.2mm on my Taz 6 and 0.3 to 0.8 on my d-bot so I understand the frustration there.
Likely I will remove the max bed temp as it really is not important unless you are applying for an industrial level assertion and those will be case by case. Things like Ultem need special things where as Nylon CAN be done on a lower end machine if needed.
We want the community to have as much input on this list as possible, but it is clear we need to make sure it is not overly specific!
Sorry to say that I wasn’t able to get 100% through this comment chain but this is what I did when I stopped using 3Dhubs. I moved to Digifabster after a recommendation on this page. Honestly, I should have done it sooner if I knew about this and the improvements since then are great. No complaints honestly, but I figure you all are more looking to produce a network versus a CRM, correct?
@Ben_Van_Den_Broeck a bit of both… haven’t heard of digifabster personally, but I’ll see what they are about. With My 3D Pros we will remove a great deal of the BS associated with other systems and make it easy and affordable to use.
Grant, please add us to your list of Pros. We are a bricks and mortar 3D store in Evergreen Colorado located in a strip mall, with regular retail hours and a retail showroom. We used to be a Hub from when they first started (we opened in 2013), but their pricing model just didn’t work with ours. We not only build, but we also offer design using Solidworks (and ColourIT, we have an Mcor Iris), and we are authorized resellers of 3D Systems, Type A Machines, Makerbot, Z-Morph, Printrbot, Lulzbot, Tiertime, Mcor, Taulman 3D, Colorfabb, and Makeshaper.