Is there a good wax 3d printer out on the market cheap?

3D Printing
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Is there a good wax 3d printer out on the market cheap?

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How about a 3d printer of generic design that uses wax filament?

http://www.machinablewax.com/product.php?product=52

The link above also provides temperatures and guidelines as well as cautions to observe when using wax filament. I’ll bet this stuff is a good candidate for using the belt-drive extruder mechanism I saw earlier today.

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Thank you I’m looking into this asp.

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The Little RP ( http://www.littlerp.com/ ) or other DLP resin printers can print castable resin. The little RP build volume is small compared to filament printers though, but can do very high detail jewelry.

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@patrick_gaston ​ if you are looking for jewelry design, filament printing is close but you will get less post processing with the resin prints. The resolution of the printed castable resin is just sooo much better.

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I have some machinable wax filament and haven’t even tried it yet!

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Looks like most printers can use it if you use a few coats of hairspray on a heated bed. Probably would stay away from Bowden extruders, other than that most should work.

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Thanks guys this information is very helpful.

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@Brook_Drumm ​ I ordered also the wax filament from “Machineablewax”, but after loading it to one of our Printrbot Plus, Cura told me that I can’t extrude blelow 170c. Celcius … but the wax filament needs to be extruded by 135 to 140c. After I send a email to Sam, asking for help, but he told me that there is no (easy) way. So it’s not possible. Do “you” have any idea what to do ?

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I’ve not been exposed to “generic” printer components as yet. All the stuff I have is turnkey. How does the device determine the temperature? If it’s a resistance measurement, could a resistor be placed in the circuit to return a figure that is not a real number but an adjustment of the real reading from the hot end modified by the resistor value?

The printer should think it’s running 170 because the resistor has changed the value, while the real temperature would be closer to what you want?

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Hi @Fred_U sorry I’m not much in to electronics, I’m a CAD guy… As far as I know it’s a safety on the Printrbot board that you not by mistake extrude with a to low temperatue damaging your extruder etc. ​

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I consulted the g-g-google about thermistors and learned that there are positive temperature coefficient thermistors and negative temperature coefficient thermistors. This is encouraging. PTC type increase resistance as temperature increases. NTC type increase resistance as temperature decreases. The info I read suggests that NTC are more common.

NTC scenario:
Because one wants to “move” the range of temperature for the hot end, one would add a resistor in parallel with the thermistor, effectively reducing the resistance. This would mislead the control circuitry to believe that the hot end was hotter than it really was, causing it to reduce temperature. An added benefit to this method is that if one reduces the resistance too much, the hot end will get colder and cause no damage.

Some experimentation would be necessary and one would have to have a suitable method of measuring the temperature of the hot end while adding or subtracting resistance, but I think it could be accomplished with little difficulty on a generic or open design printer.

If someone has a spare printer of this nature, I’d be happy to receive it for the purposes of this experiment. I’d also venture a guess that there are people more skilled than I at this sort of thing, who would have to experiment very little to achieve the goal.