3d printing involes very little forces and requires great speed more than any router I have seen is capable of, printing large 3d Items takes an extremely long time hence 3d printers average 200-300mm Cubed work areas prints can run for days at that size. What you need is a cheap 3d printer depending on quality needed and materials to be used this can cost anywhere from £200 for a bog standard Prusa i3 knock off to a lot of money for proffesional machines, tacking a print head onto an 8x4 and 3d printing is about as feasable strapping a router onto a 3d printer and cutting aluminium it aint going to happen succesfully, closest thing would be a mostly printed CNC that can run half a dozen print heads all printing same item i.e. duplicating one item.
Information needed to advise on suitable printer What sort of prints? What materials? size of items to be printed? What sort of accuracy required.
Mach 3 pretty useless for 3d printing, software best reasonably priced Simply3D, plenty of free software around Repetier id a standard lots of info to be found on sites like Reprap Wiki.
Lastly 3d printers can be temperamental beasts and need tuning to perform well, print speeds are slow and materials like ABS can be badly affected by as little as a draught caused by someone walking past.
Adding a 3D printer to my CNC router
Reply with Quote
