These 3D printers print 3D printers! Touring inside Prusa Research's factory to see how they make their 3d printers (using their 3d printers!) and their filament.
I tried asking Google Bard for a summary and apparently it works now. Is this accurate? As for the printers themselves, some parts are 3D printed, but many essential parts are made out of metal...
I tried asking Google Bard for a summary and apparently it works now. Is this accurate?
This video is about a tour of Prusa’s 3D printing farm. The video starts with the host Joseph introducing himself and the purpose of the visit. Blanchisha, who is in charge of the farm, takes Joseph around and explains the different stages of the 3D printing process.
The first stop is the warehouse where the raw materials are stored. They have both recycled and virgin plastic pellets. The pellets are then dried and fed into the extruder, where they are melted and mixed with color. The molten plastic is then pushed through a die head and into a water bath to cool it down.
The cooled plastic is then pulled through a series of rollers that control the diameter of the filament. The filament is then wound onto spools and laser marked with the type of filament and the date it was made. The spools are then vacuum sealed and shrink wrapped before being stacked on pallets to be shipped out.
Joseph also meets with Adam, the head of filament development, who shows him the different machines used in the filament production process. Adam explains that the temperature of the extruder is higher than what you would normally use for printing, because the plastic needs to be more viscous to flow through the machine.
The video also shows the Prusa farm’s new AFS system, which is a fully automated system for printing and finishing 3D prints. The AFS system can print on demand, which means that they don’t need to keep as much stock on hand. The system can also swap out printers if one of them breaks down.
The video ends with Joseph thanking Blanchisha for the tour and giving a call to action for viewers to learn more about Prusa and their printers.
As for the printers themselves, some parts are 3D printed, but many essential parts are made out of metal (the frame, rods that the print head slides on, gears, the nozzle, the build plate, the power supply), or they're circuit boards.
A more practical goal is for the entire printer to be buildable from standard parts that you can order or make. Using 3D printing instead of injection molding for the plastic makes this possible, along with being able to order custom circuit boards pretty easily.
However, injection-molded parts are significantly cheaper at larger volumes than 3D printed parts, which is why most products you buy use injection molding. The molds cost thousands of dollars so they aren't suitable for prototyping.
Put it this way, the host is Scotty Allen, so the AI summary is already not off to a good start. :P Josef Prusa, the person who Scotty talks to first is the owner of Prusa Research, and actually...
Put it this way, the host is Scotty Allen, so the AI summary is already not off to a good start. :P
Josef Prusa, the person who Scotty talks to first is the owner of Prusa Research, and actually isn't in much of the video after that. I'm not sure of the production engineering head's name, but it sounds like she says Blanca something. Bard is clearly relying on the YouTube's auto-generated captions though since they show her name as being "Blan Chisa", which is very likely incorrect. And overall the auto-captions are quite bad, so it's not surprising that relying on them ends up confusing Bard.
Other than that it's an okay summary of a small portion of the video (the very beginning and very end), but not for the whole video. So I wouldn't recommend basing your assessment of the video on it, since it doesn't cover anywhere close to everything shown in it... like the sections where they actually do discuss their use of die-cast aluminum parts, as well showing their injection molding, and PCB parts fabrication processes.
Yeah, that would be nice. Especially since they hopefully might even be good enough to save us a bunch of time manually tagging these sorts of video submission topics. :P
Yeah, that would be nice. Especially since they hopefully might even be good enough to save us a bunch of time manually tagging these sorts of video submission topics. :P
Somewhat related, a short while ago another creator announced a project that promised to revive the RepRap philosophy of 3D printers that can print new 3D printers. There are a few other creators...
Somewhat related, a short while ago another creator announced a project that promised to revive the RepRap philosophy of 3D printers that can print new 3D printers. There are a few other creators who are also working on simelar ideas from different angles (see also: Rook).
We can never have enough 3D printers.
I tried asking Google Bard for a summary and apparently it works now. Is this accurate?
As for the printers themselves, some parts are 3D printed, but many essential parts are made out of metal (the frame, rods that the print head slides on, gears, the nozzle, the build plate, the power supply), or they're circuit boards.
A more practical goal is for the entire printer to be buildable from standard parts that you can order or make. Using 3D printing instead of injection molding for the plastic makes this possible, along with being able to order custom circuit boards pretty easily.
However, injection-molded parts are significantly cheaper at larger volumes than 3D printed parts, which is why most products you buy use injection molding. The molds cost thousands of dollars so they aren't suitable for prototyping.
Put it this way, the host is Scotty Allen, so the AI summary is already not off to a good start. :P
Josef Prusa, the person who Scotty talks to first is the owner of Prusa Research, and actually isn't in much of the video after that. I'm not sure of the production engineering head's name, but it sounds like she says Blanca something. Bard is clearly relying on the YouTube's auto-generated captions though since they show her name as being "Blan Chisa", which is very likely incorrect. And overall the auto-captions are quite bad, so it's not surprising that relying on them ends up confusing Bard.
Other than that it's an okay summary of a small portion of the video (the very beginning and very end), but not for the whole video. So I wouldn't recommend basing your assessment of the video on it, since it doesn't cover anywhere close to everything shown in it... like the sections where they actually do discuss their use of die-cast aluminum parts, as well showing their injection molding, and PCB parts fabrication processes.
Ah, that's unfortunate. Hopefully YouTube summaries will work someday.
Yeah, that would be nice. Especially since they hopefully might even be good enough to save us a bunch of time manually tagging these sorts of video submission topics. :P
Somewhat related, a short while ago another creator announced a project that promised to revive the RepRap philosophy of 3D printers that can print new 3D printers. There are a few other creators who are also working on simelar ideas from different angles (see also: Rook).
Bobbieverse anyone?