I currently have the ability to mill all of the flat patterned pieces for the MP3DP out of a very rigid material. I was curious what everybody’s thoughts are on the limiting factors for the print volume? Eg. if I scale everything up, when do the printed junctions become a limitation? What other limitations are there?
Thanks for the advice.
For the curious, I have access to an industrial CNC router and .25" aluminum skin honeycomb panels. The stiffness of the panels is incredible for their thickness and weight.
The biggest one is print time. You would have to get more specific on why you need a bigger printer. Large prints are difficult and require a ton of time. You would be much better off just cutting up the part and printing it in pieces.
Print volume definitely isn’t a driving design goal. I just figured since I have access to something that’s more capable than MDF or PVC, I might as well take advantage of it. I wouldn’t need to push the Z at all, but having the option of 300x300mm XY could be useful occasionally.
If I went with a larger XY, I would likely upgrade the rods to 10 or 12mm.
The limitation for X, Y area is the heat bed and it’s power. Even the large silicone heaters are difficult to find in larger sizes, and typically shift to straight AC power to handle the load. John and I have a 300x380mm bed and it takes close to 60A of 12V (720W). I have a heater that I picked up thinking to use on my MPCNC if I ever really needed to print large (400x500), and it uses 120V, 1100W so close to 10A. If I ever fire that one up I’ll have to use a separate circuit for the heat bed since a standard circuit only provides 15A.
1100W is not that much. An oven or an electric heater is at least twice that kind of power. Plus it will only draw that much current at the beginning, after it reaches its operating temperature the power consumption will drop a lot. You don’t actually need to build a separate circuit for this, your 15A one will be more than enough
