Micronics Announces Desktop SLS 3D Printer, Starting at $2,999 [video]
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They've come out of left field, with, as of this writing, little to no online presence (low views and followers on Twitter and Youtube) and are promising a machine that's literally 10x cheaper than it's nearest competitor, with promises of having worked out all the reliability details of bed leveling, heating, sintering, cleaning and small feature size (0.15mm).
In addition, they talk about abandoning digital controllers because of cost and going for analog only, which makes my bullshit detector go off. They also talk about recreating slicer software (using the Unreal engine). In other words, they've claimed to recreate the whole hardware, electronic and software toolchain for the industry to offer a high quality and affordable device.
Again, its not like any of this theoretically can't be done, it's that the details are hard and tend to be underestimated by people. When someone promises to breeze past the tripping points of hardware, electronics and software that have been present for the last 20 years, I start to become suspicious.
If this were a company in China (Shenzen, say) I would be much more open to the possibility, because of embedded domain knowledge and easy access to high end manufacturing. Note that fiber lasers have dropped 10x in cost to under $2k from $15k+ from what the were 10 years ago, so its not the price of high end technological devices isn't dropping at an exponential rate.
Maybe someone else can comment on whether this is or looks more legitimate than I'm giving it credit for?
This is only for driving galvo motors. And analog makes a lot of sense for that. Complexity is moderate too.
> They also talk about recreating slicer software (using the Unreal engine)
Back in 2017, I implemented my own (very basic - it was not generating any supports) slicer for resin printers, which would be a similar deal for SLS. It's not too hard, and the Unreal Engine actually has a lot of geometry bits implemented. So, I believe the guy on that.
I share concerns about the rest of the system. Manufacturing is hard and it's doubly so when making machines, like 3d printers. We'll see, I guess. At the very least, it would be interesting to follow this development. I subscribed to their Youtube channel.
The only thing really new here would be powder layering. It's unclear how that might be mad cheaper today. Maybe they found a solution?
Yes, sorry, I was trying to highlight that with the "... digital controllers ..." bit. I'm no electrical engineer so maybe this is not a big deal.
> Back in 2017, I implemented my own ... slicer for resin printers ...
I've implemented a Gerber to GCode converter. All these things are well within reach. The point I'm trying to make is that to do them well, to have the bugs worked out, to have them reliable enough for production use, etc. is much more difficult than one would think.
One of the big factors that the current gamut of slicer toolchains has going for it is that people have been using it, so its limitations are known.
This is kind of my point. The statements are crafted as if to entice people on the periphery of this space who are knowledgeable enough to know its possible, or who are frustrated with the current toolchain or machine price points, but who don't have a good enough sense for whats probable.
Again, there's no reason this shouldn't exist. I would never want to discourage someone for making an attempt at displacing the current batch of clunky software. I really hope this tool does exist at the price point they're claiming.
I would give them much more slack if they had code released or has some or all of their machine's schematics or code under a libre/free/open license. As it stands, it seems very scammy.
Anyway, thanks for the response. I agree, we'll have to see.
Oh yeah. Even if it's not scam, it is going to be buggy for the first couple of years.
Currently, we are working with beta testers and will be sending review units out to content creators before launch so you can get a better idea of how it all works. In the meantime, if you submit a part on https://www.micronics3d.com/quote, we can print it for you to see for yourself!
This is our first video coming out of stealth and more will come in the future, so get subscribed!
It's a lot easier to write the software for an SLS machine than an FDM machine, I wouldn't count that as a concern honestly. You no longer need to worry about specific paths, number of perimeter layers, overhangs, or any of that kind of stuff. It radically simplifies the problem space, so it's not unreasonable for someone to throw together an MVP of an entirely new slicer for SLS in a few weeks.
Oh this is fun: https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/15eq050/is_it_p...
Apparently the plastic print powder is an explosion hazard. I hope they didn't skimp on safety.
Wonder what else they've done?
(And for that matter, how big is the risk anyway? As another commenter pointed out, flour is explosive too, but we don't have to do anything special with our flour bins at home to deal with it.)
Curious what he meant about not needing support structures, being able to "print in mid air." How exactly do you pull that off? Surely gravity would protest.
So as the layers build up, the powder will "pack" in underneath the fused material, and support it.
I'm not in a position to watch the video at the moment, but I don't see where the price was announced other than in the description of said video...
The classic way of getting around that is to leave a small hole in the chamber that's open to the outside - then you drain the powder out of that hole and, if needed, plug it up after you're done.
I really hope they're able to pull it off. FDM printing is great but not when it comes to arbitrary geometries. I needed to print a 3-way ducting tee the other day that would have been incredibly time consuming to do on my Bambu X1 with all the support filament switching that would have been needed - whereas this printer would have been able to knock it out in no time flat.
Really looking forward to when this releases.