The High Speed Future of 3D Printing - Quadrupolar Express

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Today's Watch:

In this video I document my progress towards building a parallel 3D printing platform that can use multiple printheads to work on a single print. The machine uses a polar printhead arrangement to avoid issues with path planning and collisions. It can also continuously spin in one direction it does not need to repeatedly change directions, reducing wear, and negating the downsides of having a massive bed. With twice as many printheads as an IDEX machine, it should be able to print four times faster than anything else on the market.

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0:00 - Intro
0:56 - Motivation
2:09 - Printer Overview
2:28 - First Prints
3:03 - Superimposed Infill
3:29 - First Big Print
4:31 - Thanks to Members of 3D Printing Community
4:46 - Nozzle Upgrade and Additional Prints
6:14 - Machine Design
6:43 - JLC 3DP Sponsor
7:18 - Firmware Limitations
9:06 - Firmware and Slicer Needs Thirteen Axis Control
9:55 - Alignment and Calibration
12:35 - Thick Extrusion as a Temporary Solution
13:08 - Print Frame Alignment Rabbit Hole
14:22 - Conclusion
14:52 - Buy One
15:05 - Outtro

Sovol SV-08
Bambu Lab A1 P1P P1S X1C
Creality Ender 3 K1 K2

[KanielD]

The “does he even build robots” people are real quiet right now.

[WilliDurpel]

i think a big concern is filament cost. The pellets used in injection molding are like 6€ a kg, but one spool of filament cost like 20€+

[alengusic]

Respect for the build, I realized that 3d printing isn't cost effective after you said 3 kg for a trash can 😅😂

[IvanJoel]

Nathan Builds Robots is the definitive source for quadrupolar high speed printing

[MrBaskins]

when i first saw your channel i knew you were a gifted engineer who was gonna bring something meaningful to the space (im sure my earlier comments reflect this assumption). this printer is in a league of it's own. i keep rewinding the video because watching it move is magic. thank you for sharing this with the world.

[kellymoses]

A closed loop computer vision or LIDAR alignment system is the only real solution I can think of. Maybe you could print a special test print and use a 3D scanner to calibrate it.

[koenvanduffel]

WOW, this is a whole other level. I recently jumped on the RatRig IDEX wagon and while they have got great control over precision alignment with their visual assisted alignment tool (VAOC) this has so many more degrees of freedom! Exciting to see how far you got this already.

[IronBrain]

Relative positional accuracy is much easier than absolute positional accuracy. A normal 3D printer has great relative positional accuracy, but can get away with pretty poor absolute positional accuracy.

[Jazzy-kzwd]

it was cool to see and feel these prints IRL at open sauce, it's just so foreign compared to any other FDM prints i'd seen before

[FasutonemuMyoji]

I haven’t watched your channel in a while, I’m glad to see you are doing more than just printer reviews, this was good!

[jeppoification]

Man I'm in awe of your design, not only being able to build it but to get the motion working/coded would be mind boggling for me.

[rhyspana]

This is a great project. There are plenty of people building and refurbing cars with 3D printed parts, this could be a game changer for them. First video I have seen of this channel, will be back!!

[Adamtherealboss]

Genius build, man! I hope you have grants/investors for your amazing ideas.

[meadball]

Honestly just having a rotating build plate is something I've never seen before. Me coming from a machinist's background, you can make that build plate very stable and very flat like on a vertical lathe. Just have to have the bearings supporting the right places. What you were saying about machine rigidity is absolutely true. No machine is truly square. It's as close as it can be and then you put in the right offsets to counteract its imperfections.

[DaBomb]

really putting "builds robots" into the name

[free_spirit]

The Duet 3 control board allows for parallel processes. With the X5 expansion board you can control about 10 axes. Firmware also allows for parallel printing. I don't think it's still enough for your application though. How it works in practice is that two printheads will both execute their particular task until they receive a command to sync them up. At that point I think the fastest printhead will wait for the slowest printhead to complete its gcode.

[miserablepile]

This is exactly the approach we need for faster printing. Unless we find some materials science miracle, we can only melt and extrude plastic so fast with one printhead. More printheads is the answer!

[albertpierz]

This could be game changing for prosthetics companies. Seems like a perfect machine for it.

[Zae-R]

This project is really cool honestly. It is a very unique rig and an out of the box thinking for solving printing speeds. I have too many questions about your design choices but one of them is.. to get a precise frame and gantry alignment and a stiffer frame, why not make the frame square instead of rectangle? This way, the gantries form a perfect 90° angle X shape and can be connected in the middle.

[PraxZimmerman]

I suggest an epoxy granite frame. Not because it's a practical solution, but because it would be entertaining to watch.