Giant Machine or Giant 3D Print Farm? Which Wins?

Domination of Mass Production 3D Printing is up for grabs, and theres a few big players fighting for the throne. But which 3D Printing Process will come out on top?

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About Slant 3D

🏭 High-Volume 3D Printing: Scalability Meets Flexibility
Slant 3D's Large-Scale 3D Print Farms utilize 1000's of FDM 3D printers working 24/7 to offer limitless scalability and unparalleled flexibility. Whether it's 100 or 100,000 parts, our system can handle it reliably, while still allowing for real-time design updates, ensuring products evolve with the times. This adaptability is key in today's fast-paced world.

🌿 Sustainable Manufacturing: Eco-Friendly Efficiency
Embrace a system that drastically reduces carbon emissions by eliminating carbon-intensive steps in the supply chain, such as global shipping and warehousing. Our approach minimizes this footprint, offering a more sustainable manufacturing option.

⚙️ Digital Warehouses: Parts On-Demand
Think of print farms as a "Digital Warehouse", meaning we can store your parts digitally on a server rather than physically on a shelf. parts are available on-demand, reducing the need for extensive physical inventory.

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[gregspecht]

You didn't mention that some parts are larger than the smaller printers build volumes

[tazanteflight]

How about a 3d print farm, .. of giant machines

[kurtnelle]

"One big giant machine" I guess you cannot stress that point enough 😅 (I'm starting to get recommendations from your back catalogue)

[WillPower]

Everyone printing their own stuff when needed!

[farmerandy]

I think both have their place, print farms can give a startup a fair chance at survival while the big machines can help the big factories

[toremlabs]

I love the discussion you bring about 3D print farming on your channel!

I agree that there is space for both to grow and I think eventually each will grow and specialize into their own market segments. It's the reason we see today home printers and industrial size printers for magazines, newspapers, and such. Like you said, there is space for everyone and there will be even more as the demand increases.

I'll be honest, I'm a bit biased towards big machines because that's what my core business focuses on, but I'm still excited to see innovations in the smaller printers, especially when it makes it accessible to more people, like in education, or making it a great tool for SME's.

In the end, it's a wonderful technology and I can't wait to see the new machines that compete each other to become the best of the best! I consider myself lucky to see this happening live in front of my eyes and even having the opportunity to participate and perhaps have some influence.

Personal note: listening to you talk about the disadvantages of the bigger machines makes me realize that our proposal for our 3D printer actually solves some of those shortcomings regarding batch production. So it has definitely influenced some design decisions. Thanks!

[wilsistermans]

Printfarms use lots of space, and lots of attention to change filament, remove parts and upload jobs. The big machine is faster, has a bigger build volume and needs less attention. In many cases the big machines will win.

[timothymcdavid]

I have been noticing you layer lines and print head speeds in your video's ... Can you talk about the benefits/drawbacks of using large nozzle sizes ... 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1mm for example ... Relating to fusion jet on of its advantages was multicolour printing basically replicating complexed objects so you can also touch on that keep up the great work. Also in looking at setting up a small print farm myself licensing and contacting artist ... Finally power backup for 3D printing eg line conditioning/UPS etc.

[niklasf]

3D printing is NOT going to be the dominant form of manufacturing at some point.

Current reports state that the potential could be around 5% of the global manufacturing market. Just getting to these 5% will take around 20 years considering the current grows rates. The high cost remain the biggest hurdle for any large scale adoption.
Despite that, 5% actually means a lot. A lot of great and impactful applications which will be realized through 3D printing in the future. So the future of 3D printing is bright but ultimately it is just another tool in your manufacturing tool box, expected to do 5% of the work which needs to be done.

[eliezercohen]

i was wondering what filament types and which manufacturers does slant3d use?

[aronseptianto]

what's for sure is in a print farm scale, dealing with powder given proper equipment is much more pleasant compared to dealing with resin in that kind of scale
FDM has a resolution limit which is really irrelevant for most products but in the situation where detail is needed, powder sounds much more scalable than resin

[brin]

Nice video. I disagree with your assertion that 3D printing will become the dominant form of manufacturing (at least not without some radical technological improvements). 3D printing is an excellent tool for prototyping or producing specialized/bespoke/difficult-to-manufacture, relatively low volume parts. Once product volume is high enough however, the (normally) prohibitive costs associated with establishing injection molding tools and traditional manufacturing processes is no longer the issue. The issue becomes profit-and-cost per manufactured unit. Nearly every consumer product out there is only profitable (and also affordable) due to economies of scale in its production. If you are going to manufacture tens or hundreds of thousands (or millions) of a given part, the overall cost price of an injection molded part (once the cost of the tooling / molding pipeline has been factored in) will typically be a fraction of the cost compared with 3D printing it - and this is even before we get into the shortcomings of FDM / SLA printed parts and materials vs injection molded parts.

I hope I'm wrong, but for now and the foreseeable future, I think that 3D printing's advantage will be *mainly* limited to that sweet spot somewhere between "make one of the thing" and "make a few thousand of the thing". It will certainly have its place in the manufacturing arsenal, but I don't think it will ever be the *dominant* method of manufacture.

[SaintAngerFTW]

Pcbway and Jlcpcb are both using giant machines and already give parts at 1$.... Ill put my bets on the chinese

[alext]

I totally get your point, with the HP multijet though are they actually production quality in terms of strength? Because I was under impression that a normal FDM printer produces stronger parts albeit at all lower quality vs higher quality material jetting (or even SLA) but not as durable

[alext]

I am commenting as I watch, also, with the newer FDM machines the reliability has gone up quite a bit I noticed, I am not sure if they are on par with the big industrial machines yet but certainly given their initial low cost a very liable option for any small to medium sized business