Once again a OpenRC Project (the F1 this time) is used to promote a cool new product.
Tomorrow is the day when Allforge will release their Kickstarter for “the world’s first 3D Molding Machine. Mass make metal, plastic, candy, soap, & more - in seconds.”
I think this thing looks really cool, i hope it works out!
Nothing in manufacturing is “push of a button” easy. Anyone who says so is just marketing.
Maybe this is cool, but I’ll believe it when I see it work in real time. These video shots were all staged, and do not appear to be actually showing the machine in full operation - just dropping things out the bottom.
If it’s not complete vapor ware, it’s at least completely irresponsible for over promising.
The script reads like a parody of all the worst Kickstarter promises. This “campaign” actually upset me.
Brook
Printrbot
@Brook_Drumm Why would injection modelling be that difficult? Making the molds is difficult, and they indicate this clearly in their material. Once you have molds though, most should be mechanical work (heating, pouring, waiting).
Making molds is extremely difficult- and that doesn’t even come close to describing it. And sealing a two part, high pressure mold is crazy hard… These molds shown are huge!!! And no one with experience would see this machine and take it seriously. Too many variables. I immediately dismissed it as total marketing… I just read a quote:
engineering is usually inversely proportional to marketing.
Brook
Hmm, I would expect people who are happy with desktop 3D prints to be happy also with what allforge can deliver.
That is the crux, is it not? That so many people are happy with an ultimaker, while common toys are of much higher finish and rigidity quality.
I believe that for my use case, limited runs of parts to use in workshops, this would be a ‘good enough’ machine, just as I’m content now to 3d print 20 parts for a workshop. After all, I have no alternative to using my own 3D printed parts. Converting to a mold, would be a huge speed up, provided the quality is ‘good enough’.
All I’m saying is show the whole process unedited with a clock in the background. from printing molds to actually making parts. They should be up front with where the build volume of a certain part actually shows a payoff in time and money to injection mild on this machine. If it is even operational and real. The marketing video does not show actual operation- it’s a smoke and mirrors video.
Also consider the prints you are making may be 50% infill or less, so since injection molding is a solid part, the per-part price will go up. It could go up 8x or around there. There will also be additional operations to clean up the seam where the two part mold seals- plus the sprue cleanup. So it’s just not apples to apples. No one should buy until detailed specs are shown because if you are doing 200 parts, you have to amortize the cost of the machine, design time for the mold, mold cost, time to make the mold, material cost, cost to run the machine and time to make each part. These are all sliding scales dependent on the part you are making.
Not all parts can even be made with injection molding, so you will have to be sure you are only making parts that can be injection molded on this machine.
Designing a mold takes special knowledge and special software to do it “quickly”. For instance, you need 2-3 degree draft angles on all edges of almost all parts. On some molds, you have to retool a few times to optimize the release. That means huge costs- we have never made a mold that just works the first time… Granted, we do challenging parts, and we have incentive to make it work since we make thousands of each part. The smaller the quantity, the more fragile the economics are and the easier the whole cost model falls apart since you have to amortize by the number of parts. My bet is that the payoff for these machines is only when you make hundreds, maybe a couple thousand parts.
All molds have a lifespan too. Aluminum molds will cost thousands to outsource and start degrading after a few thousand parts. 3D printed molds will have a dramatically shorter useful lifespan if they work at all. The mold must be really really smooth for release and I don’t see 3D printed molds doing even hundreds of parts.
Food temperatures, plastic temperatures and metal temperatures needed to injection mold are night and day apart on the spectrum. Any machine claiming to do all three is some kind of magic fairy dust. The variables are staggering across all the possible materials. It’s crazy.
The marketing video says “simply Cnc…” (The molds) get them “same day”… Hahaha. That’s, ah, not realistic. Cnc isn’t simple. Same day anything is ridiculous. You must have the two surfaces so glass-flat just to seal the two part mold. Have you ever tried to print something that large without warp? Even pla will warp that big. You will need to machine even plastic parts to seal properly.
The list goes on, but judging from the (lack of) interest in this thread, the state of their website, the fact that I can’t find them on Kickstarter, and the extremely limited success of similar campaigns… This is dead in the water anyway.
Do I want a desktop injection molder? Yes. But this doesn’t bring the details needed to gain any confidence that this is the one.
Brook
Printrbot
Hi @Brook_Drumm , I hope in this post, I could you ask you your opinion of:
Thank you
@Brook_Drumm All valid points.
They definitely gloss over the mold making difficulty. And the time needed for cooling, … . It seems an app will notify you when parts are ready 
Apart from that, the machine is of complexity of other machines out there. This post in the board is interesting:
https://community.allforge.com/t/mold-hub-and-and-ejection-for-allforge-vs-modika/448/8
Note that they don’t do a kickstarter anymore, instead they work on their site with eg paypal, and you have money back guarantee if you cancel like that, which is better than kickstarter I believe (provided they don’t go out of business).