it can’t be more than 6" tall, but it’s going to take ten and a half hours to print, and I expect my waste receptacle will be kinda full too (if the &£+*#@ litter tray didn’t keep getting blocked.
Dead on the money on your points. I print tchotchkes (no disrespect to anyone making them) to give away and make money to do that on custom engineered design. As soon as mass production comes to the table I am out and count my profits while handing over to them. When looking at a new printer there was a choice I had to make. $xxxx for a K2 or ~3*$xxxx for a Prusa tool changer. The tool changer was very sexy and would nicely compliment a capabilities of my extensive wood/metal shop. The K2 would do everything I needed done just not as “efficiently”. It depends on the customer. The ones that are worth keeping comprehend the value, effort and cost that goes into making what THEY want and are to be cherished. They will tell their friends, who respect a fair price for a quality product. The ones that ONLY care about cost and complain about it at every opportunity are to be YEETED. If you lower your shorts and take a hit the problem is that THEY will tell their cheap friends that you are a soft touch and you will be so busy getting $crewed you will go out of business (or your mind). I figured if I was the primary customer, if I wanted it, screw the cost. If a customer wanted something that had a massive waste costs, I hand them the estimate with my fair profit and if they want to bargain, I politely ask them what part of what THEY want, that costs the estimated amount, do they wish to remove? I can then re-estimate and provide them with a fair, lower price for what THEY now want. If you get enough of the “good” customers, you may be able to justify a sexy tool changer, BUT, you will still have to charge more to account for the capital cost of the sexy printer. The customer may always be right, but they may not be right for you. The best ones I have had are the ones that when the quite large job is done, the product meets or exceeds the customers expectations, they happily pay and include a FAT tip (new printer sized). They are rare but they do exist. The best bait for them is skill, reputation and experience.
Fully agree. I worked on sales for a LONG time and I picked up these gems…
One employer was known for being at the tope of the market in terms of quality. Also price, of course. At all customer meetings where alcohol was provided (yes, this shows how long ago it was), the only beer we would provide was Stella Artois…with their branding tag line, “Reassuringly Expensive”.
One customer had a sign on his wall;
"We do three types of job here. Good ones, cheap ones and quick ones.
You can choose any TWO."
Thanks for the input…the waste being generated (and the time lost as I seem to be having a night for throwing errors - the latest one being the PTFE tube popping out of the hydraulic seal on the extruder…fortunately after some previous problems they’ve already sent me a replacement extruder housing, so I’m up and running again) is huge considering the size of the part…I’d need maybe half a reel of filament to be given over just to the littler tray.
Interesting experiment, but I think outside of the constraints I listed, the CFS will be a tool of convenience rather than artistry, using it’s ability to swap in a new reel when the old one runs out.
This tentacle as been an interesting experiment, but I think if you want a multicolour model, you’re best printing it grey and getting your paints out…
Well, I let the tentacle print finish. I am both impressed and horrified.
First impressed…because the purge tower on this print decided to go for a little walk.
Not only that the print paused due to errors at least half a dozen times (all I think symptoms of a failing pneumatic seal on the extruder housing), and yet…
Litter tray waste 132g. Are you effing kidding me? So a 14g part generates 162g waste. Eleven and a half times its own weight, or if you prefer, the part itself represents just 7.95% of the filament used. 92.05% waste.
I’m staggered. I knew it was bad, but this…? Remember I said “remember that” a few times during the calculation?
But when you make 20 you got the same waste and let say the fillaments swap is 5 hours more thats count only one time for al 20.
And lets say you print a Winny the Pooh. Body yellow, shirt red and eyes, mouth, nose black. I choose to make the eyes nose mouth black with a sharpie . Then you only need 4 fillaments changes and not 43 changes ( numbers ar fiction dont remember the real numbers only that its 80% les waste )
and no one that buy it wil see the difrence. I am to critically to prints myself always see the technical errors my customers dont see it and are happy and pay 7,50 euro for a print that cost me 1,50 euro total. I sell not much now dont got the time with my other work, still i sell enough to buy enough fillament to print the whole year free for myself think i use 200 kilo. The most i make is with hueforge converting family portraits in 2 colors of gray 1 black 1 white that cost me 1 hour of work and the costs of printing is really low. Now i making protective foot caps for a local gymnastics club normally the pay 40 euro for one i sell them for 25 euro and total costs are only 2,40 euro per cap. You can really make some money with the right things you only need to find the right jobs to make.
I worked in Engineering, the Sales guys always took care of us. The company my father and then I worked for had a fully catered Christmas party for the adults and another one for the children of the employees! Swankest hotel in town and it is a capital city government town so it was a damn good party. My son works for a different company that does the same. Seems the old days are not completely gone thank goodness.
You mentioned the PTFE tube coming out, do you have a strain relief on it? It is known to break apart inside and scatter bits of spring steel into the works. Anthony Walker just had problems with his no steel seen so far, I tossed a load of pictures from mine up there.
That tentacle video was terrifying and suspenseful. I was waiting for the walking tower to be dragged into the tentacle and clean up the works. Glad and impressed that it didn’t. On the few colour prints I have done. I reoriented where possible but not much use on that tentacle. I must confess that my reasons for buying the K2 were many and varied with the main one being self serving. I wanted it for tribological printing. Testing imbedded bearings with cheap filament so I can print them for real with no waste on my dual head printer. I also have an engineering project that will more than likely pay for the capital cost of it but there is a currency far more valuable than any coin of any realm. Wife points. I have already custom designed, printed and installed dog/baby gate bracketry that allows installation without drillin’ 'oles in my lovely oak newel posts and spindles. Wife points and me points. This has given me the cajones to attack the pièce de résistance. A vintage lamp that has a broken shade. Very custom and highly valued by the other half. As much art as engineering and she is an accomplished artist in numerous media that takes commissions. I have a hard time staying between the lines. I am 5 prototypes in (from pictures and measurements only, no sample) and have the connection from the shade to the lamp perfected. To my surprise the test print got such rave reviews that I am now confidently looking at my next 360+ hp GT sports car garage queen. Might even be able to get a colour changing wrap on it, artist types like that right…? K2 Plus combo leads to colour changing car and mad stacks of wife points!
I’m a big fan of the Slant 3D channel on YouTube —excellent videos about engineering for 3D printing and for large-volume 3D printing business info—He co-owns the largest print farm in North America (I think it’s the largest—more than 1000 printers chattering away, I believe). Anyhow, from what I’ve seen, every single printer in this enormous warehouse have one thing in common—they all appear to be single-filament machines.
This speaks volumes about the commercial viability of multi-color printing with currently-available equipment.
I thought the serious issue of serious filament and time wastage with non layer colouring on a K2 would have been fairly obvious to buyers before they purchased? I’m not printing commercially but do print stuff for friends and family. For most smaller single colour or layered smaller items I don’t charge them but I do charge for non layered coloured items.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I didn’t ever think it WAS commercial. Even without the waste, the time jump from a handful of minutes to several hours made it quite clear it was a non-starter (outside of the constraints I listed…if coffee mats is your “thing” then you’re fine I guess).
@Martin_Prent of course multiple parts will drop the impact…but let’s assume waste remains completely constant as part number rises…
Weight of part :14g
Weight of waste: 162g
If I print ten parts, then I’m at 140g product, 162g waste…so I still haven’t even broken 50:50.
In fact I just did a quick test in Creality Print and the most of those tentacles I can fit on the plate is 40…that’s 560g product and 162 g waste; still running at 22.4%.
Also…/.watch the video again and now imagine that purge tower doing it’s little dance through a field of 40 or so tentacles…nope. Sorry I just don’t see it.
…and to revel in the joy of that box bottom left, who’s only function is to tell you how many parts you have selected…go on, zoom in. Explain yourselves Creality. I’ll wait.
Last word on this. Just to say that even at this ridiculous waste figure, the vast majority of which is a purge designed to clear out colour contamination, it still isn’t even doing that job…I printed the suckers from the tentacles separately…
My K2 machines run a single material, but I have a dozen X1C machines that are loaded with 3 or 4 materials. My primary material is glass fiber ABS. I use HIPS for support interface on flat surfaces. I use orange ABS for a bit of lettering fill, and PC in a few areas where the properties are required.
I keep the material changes in small areas so in most cases the added time is minutes, not hours. I gave a little though to something Prusa tool changer, but when I can buy 3 X1Cs or K2’s for that price, the productivity gain of a tool changer is negated.
Leveraging multi-material capabilities has allowed me to make products I would not be able to do with a single material, so in those cases the additional time required is not negotiable.
You are right, however, there are things you can do to make it more cost effective. First, always print as many as you can on the build plate. When printing multiples, the amount of waste is the same as printing one, because it only changes colors once for each layer. So if you can print enough copies, it will offset that waste. Second, you can add a model to the build plate to flush your waste into, instead of making waste. This model will be random colors for each layer color swap, but if you make something that you will paint later, or doesn’t need to be color coordinated, it can save all that waste. I always add a little Godzilla and flush into that, and then I sell them for $5, and people seem to like the random colors, or I will hit them with a few shots of spray paint for a solid finish. Printing a single model in multicolor is a huge waste, but if you are trying to monetize and sell the prints, quantity is your friend.
How do we know the number of objects that you have selected? As far as I can tell, you selected the front and the right and the left objects.
Did you see the waste stay the same?
You can indeed do multi-color with very little waste. But you selected one of the worst-case examples that there could be, there’s just about a change of filament on every layer.
As to your color contamination, there’s a setting for that, just increase it. Of course that would mean more waste.
You can print smart with color or you can print dumb. The single head solution that the printer has, has it’s limitations. Want to do that print with less waste, you’ve got to have multiple heads, each with it’s on color.
But no matter how much waste, I’m guessing that it did something that you weren’t able to do before, print the tentacles in multiple colors. It’s up to you to descide if it is worth it.
You obviously didn’t see my last video. Quantity wasn’t my friend when I decided to print all nine of the tentacles and one decide to go for a little walk, taking down the entire lot.
That can also happen to a 2 day print with one color it can fail at 98%. The tentakels are a really bad color print its more a show off print look wat my printer can do then to make any money on it. It purpose is probably to sit on you desk and you can look at it and think that is wat my printer can do maybe somone that really want to invest in his table top game collection want toWhen you want to commercial print in color you need prints that dont change every layer from color or everyone want the print and you can let them pay for al the cost. Most big print farms got a costumer that want a custom product 100 every week thats the base of the business al the other things the sell online is to dont let any printer sits still and of course to make a little more money. Then it dont matter how much waste because the customer pay for it. I make no mass products, hueforge i use for photos and ai generated stuff sell them between 25 65 euro costs around 5 euro. I make some things for people to sell on markets the pay me only when the sell the stuff and can tell you everything sells. Most i print custom parts for older machines and stuff that is not on the market anymore the give me the part i make it in fusion and i start printing. I make enough money to buy al fillament i ever need and every year i go on vacation for 2 weeks payed with printing buy a k2 with cfs and stil there is money left. Only got 4 fdm printers and 2 resin printers. resin printers is really different market its more for tabletop and people that like to paint and there is much more time needed to prepare the product before selling but people that paint need holders, cases, wett palets for there equipment al i can make with the fdm printers and then i can also custom it with there name because of the cfs. And its al a hobby that dont cost me money anymore never had the idee when started to make money of it just have spoken the right people and the wanted stuff. I already got my own business and dont got always the time to put in to printing thats why my wife can use a usb stick and know how to change fillaments and press the start buttom. I only make a paper so she can see what she needs to do every week.
