Hello,

I’ve been reading a lot about what people had to say on here about Objet30 printers. What a great resource to have.

I am currently debating purchasing an Objet30 Pro to complete a large project (10,000 parts) for one of my customers.

I currently use 2 FDM printers at my shop. They are top of the line “hobbyist” machines. The materials are much cheaper, but its not a lights out operation.

I am fully aware of the high proprietary materials and the need for post processing.

Is the printer really lights out operation?

Any other printers I should seriously be looking at?

Over the years has the material come down in price with the added competition?

Also, I saw online in 2012 people were saying this printer started at 20k. I was quoted about 10k over this. Is that price because the printer will have all available materials or do I need to seek other quotes?

I have attached a picture of the part I am working on. Please don’t judge too much on the print! It was my first attempt on my FDM printer!!!

Thanks in advance!

Brandon

3 Likes

Hi Brandon, that looks like a functional part, the problem of all resin materials still is that they undergo some aging, so material properties change over time,

have you thought about SLS technology, this gives you real functional parts without any postprocessing,

I can confirm that the Objet machines are “lights out operating” but material costs are pretty high.

I can probably make a very good offer for 10.000 parts, if you are interested, if yes, send a file to info@creabis.de

Best

ralf

Brandon

We work with a objet 350 this has a larger building volume, so we can offer a lower price. Send us your file and we can make you an offer.
info@3idprinting.be

www.3idprinting.be

Gr

Dave

10,000 parts sound to me like use for serial use. As Ralf wrote I would not trust any objet material for a longer periot. The material ages gets stiff and breaks over time. Only sinter and FDM materials keep their material property over a longer period.

Best Regards

Michael

It is depending on for which you want to use it. We can offer this on pro machines both SLS, FDM and polyjet

GR

3iD Dave

Hi Brandon,

Are you able to tell us the sort of thing your customer wants? Some printers are better than others depending on the job.

We have an Objet30 Prime, we bought ours brand new last year.

Nadia

https://www.3dhubs.com/leicester/hubs/irongiant3d

These are end use products that will be exposed to UV light.

They need to keep their shape yet bend and not break.

I appreciate the offers to run the parts, but I will be purchasing a printer and keeping these in house.

What kind of product life span do polyjet parts have?

The parts need to have a lifespan of around 2 years.

Brandon

Hi Brandon,

A lot of resines have problems with intense UV light. Depending on intensity you will need UV-stabilized material to cover two years lifespan. There are some companies making FDM spools out of resine of your choice.

Maybe you should by an open material printer and use own material. As far as I knew there is no standard UV stabilized material availible. UV resistance is also a problem at injection molding.

Michael

I have a fortus 900 Mc fdm Printer. With great rates. If you need help with your 10000 parts order. Nathan

Gentlemen,

everybody at 3D Hubs has a great printer. Thats why we are connected here.

Brandon is looking for a printer. He is not looking for a supplier. Please read the text and stop advertising.

Thanks

Brandon,

We have an Objet 30 Prime in our office, There are good and bad point. to this printer. My biggest concern is waste, you spend a lot of money for the materials and average 33% of that to waste. Don’t get me wrong the parts are beautiful when they come off of the printer and out of the support.

- Vero materials get super soft and pliable when they get hot (120+ degrees) so do not leave them sit in your car with the ac off for more than 10 to 15 minutes. This is from experience. Also during post processing only use COLD water!

- Tango materials start breaking done in a few days. Found this our after our first few parts for a client when they came back to us because of failures.

- Endur (RGD450) - Good material in general and produces great looking parts.

As for the 2nd Quote, I would attempt to get 2nd quote to see if you can get a better price.

You can also look into the envisionTEC line of printers. We also have a ULTRA 3SP and Micro Edu. If you have any questions about these please ask.

Thanks,

Tom

Hi Brandon,

Great questions! The Objet30 Pro is a lights out system when running with a wide range of materials. There are limitations to the material, as you will see with any 3D printer. There are always pros and cons. I would recommend reaching out to a company for a benchmark of your part printed on an Objet30 prime to test the materials yourself. With regards to pricing, I can tell you that the Objet Desktop line starts around $20k (+/- depending on time of year, availability of demo units, etc). The Objet24 for example runs at that price. This is a slightly smaller build tray than the 30 and only has one available material (VeroWhite rigid material). The Objet30, Objet30 Pro and Objet30 Prime are at different price points and offer different capabilities. Please feel free to let me know if there are any other questions I can help to answer about the system and it’s capabilities. (I have 3 Objet Desktop printers outside my office door) Thanks and Good luck!

Chris

Dear Brandon,

we have Onjet30 Prime (not Pro, but this is next model) since January 2015 and I’m regretting buying it. Don’t take me wrong, it is a very good printer, high definition and can print models using different materials. But it is a very expensive to operate due to technology used and material cost. Price you were quoted is probably used machine as new was more expensive ( north of 30K$). Technology is similar to your office ink jet printer with the same high cost of consumable. In addition changing material requires purging the old material, cleanning jets and placing new material in. If you are switching from dark to light material or materials of different composition ( Vero to tango ) you have to run full material purge. Cost from 100g to north of 200g of wasted material. It is a lot. I don’t know what FDM printer you have today, but for this number of parts looking like one you are showing here (unless you need HD finish and special material) I will purchase several Zortrax M200 printers and run them 24/7 to finish run.

Where are you located? Find Zortrax dealer in your area and talk to them and ask to print test sample for you. This how we are working with our customers, we are printing sample on different printers and usually Zortrax is a winner, unless request is for HD part. If you are located in USA please check our web site.

good luck

Kuba

Owner

I have an objet 30 pro and it is not all it’s cracked up to be. The material is very expensive and it has a fairly short exparation date. The material is also not incredibly stable. The parts warp over time and are brittle, even the rubber like materials deteriorate quickly. The support material can be dificult to remove, it tends to imbed itself into the print and leaves a fuzzy soft surface. I hear the 3D systems polyjet machine uses a wax material that is easily meletd away. I have seen some impressiv prints from this machine. If you are worried about durability and resolution I would consider an SLS machine over the objet.

Hi Brandon,

We operate an Objet Eden 350V at my day job. I have to say that while the printer makes parts that look good and runs lights out there are way too many downsides.

As others mentioned many of the materials are not really up to par, in addition to the problems mentioned they are brittle so you have to tap all screw holes and be careful to not shatter them with force. RGD450 is their best material in my experience but it is also very porous and can absorb a lot of water which will cause warping and deterioration of thin features. I have also experienced a change in material properties over time with the Objet resins as well. I have heard that Digital ABS is a much better material in general but that requires a machine with material blending features.

In addition to those problems the cleaning process is quite tedious. In my experience running parts in glossy mode can be risky for small features. Therefore our machine always gets run in matte mode where the entire part gets at least a coating of support material. The cleaning process involves manually scraping as much material off as possible, then water blasting in a cabinet which is not fun. We then soak our parts in NaOH for 25 minutes and follow up with a second round in the blasting cabinet. The cleaning process is a huge pain for small parts, if they can even make it through the process without breaking.

Lastly, we have not had good service from Stratasys. The techs know their stuff, but there are not enough of them or parts. We have run into some serious problems with our machine and ended up with it down for at least a week before a tech could get there and then we were able to get the parts. Another time we told Stratasys what we needed for parts, gave them our serial number, and parts for a different model showed up…

If you still want to look at Stratasys, the 260VS looks like it has a water soluble support material and some better model materials available. I would get a demo of the cleaning process on that though before I bought it. If you are set on a polyjet machine I would give 3D Systems a look as they use a wax support material that melts away. It seems that it does still require a secondary cleaning operation though.

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HI Brandon-

I work for a Stratasys dealer, and also run a service bureau that has 20 Stratasys printers covering the entire Stratasys FDM and polyjet portfolios. To speak to your project specifically, you need to consider what mechanical properties will be required by the application. Keeping in mind that all polyjet materials are acrylic-based, there are oftentimes limited uses for the materials as end use parts, while FDM is a different story all together, as FDM uses industrial grade thermoplastics suitable for unlimited end use applications.

That being said, you are going to find that the type of volume that you are looking to get out of the machine is unrealistic from a both a cost and timing perspective. Your most cost- and time efficient path with this will be to have the part injection molded- the part itself looks like a very simple two part mold and you will be able to do your production run at literally a fraction of the cost, fraction of the time, and also with better materials.

My two cents…

Shawn

1 Like

Hi Brandon,

It all depends on the size of the part and the material properties you are looking for. The resin from an Object30 does not create the strongest parts and the cured resin can be susceptible to UV. An FDM printer will print a part in a much stronger material like ABS or ABS+.

I would consider something more like a 3d printed tool or an aluminum tool for 10K parts. A 3d printer is good for printing a few hundred pieces, if small (I have done 300 pieces on a Dimensions 1200). A 3d printed tool can bring that number up to around a thousand or so. But after that, I would recommend tooling for that part, its faster and cheaper. Even the best the 3d printers still have some post-processing to deal with and they all go down at some point.

If you are going to invest 10-20k in a new printer, that is pretty much the cost of a small tool for injection molding. The parts will be stronger and the material cost would be lower.

Hi Brandon,

We have an Objet500 Connex3 which uses the same materials as the Objet30 system although in larger cartridges along with the ability to run flexible and colored materials.

I agree with many of the comments offered here – 10,000 pieces is typically a much larger quantity than can be produced economically by 3D printing – unless there are part features which make injection molding impractical. Support removal is really no longer an issue as soluble support is now available across all of the PolyJet platforms.

Whichever Stratasys dealer you are working with should be able to run a sample part for you and provide material cost and run time information. If that does not work out for you and you are willing to send me an STL file I could at least let you know what your material cost would be to produce the part.

Regards,

Ray

Brandon,

I wouldn’t recommend investing a machine to mass produce 3d printed parts. There are better ways to produce large volumes of parts using traditional methods and with superior end results. A 3d printed parts is always going to have its weaknesses. The volume your are looking at you could injection mold the parts and be way ahead of the game. You could even CNC machine parts and do better. Our Objet 30 pro was near 60K all said and done. Materials will cost you $600-$770 per cartridge and have expiration dates. Then you have to factor in maintenance contracts which are basically forced or service on your machine becomes a nightmare around 4K per year. We can help with production for CNC and Molding if you end up choosing an alternate path. Good Luck.