Not your typical consumer-grade 3D-printer, nonetheless if you either have an Objet24, are looking for inspiration to test-analyze your own 3D-printer, or like most are simply intrigued by the results, Mindtribe’s Ryan Vanderpol has collected their thoughts and results in this blog post. If it’s good enough for the FBI it’s probably good enough for you and me – but Mindtribe give their unfiltered analysis!
At Mindtribe, we rely heavily on our Objet24 and by-and-large it performs. It is great for making both non-form-factor housings that don’t look too pretty (they just have to work, not look good), and printing items that industrial designers have spent countless hours making both beautiful and functional. According to Objet, the printer’s accuracy is 0.1 mm (0.0039 in). With this level of accuracy, remarkably fine details can be accurately printed.
But…here’s the ‘but.’ There are some details where that accuracy (0.1 mm) just doesn’t cut it. More specifically (among others): snap fits. Recently we were working with a client that needed a water resistant enclosure for a button cell battery. With something like this, when the fit is perfect there should be a ‘snap’ that the user feels as they close the lid and seal water out from the battery. As one engineer and I were trying to fine tune this enclosure’s dimensions with 3D printed parts, another engineer from a different project piped in and said “you might want to be careful with the 3D printer’s tolerances. On [a previous project] we got bit in the butt because we tuned a snap fit with the 3D printer, but then didn’t take into account the printer’s tolerances.” Yet again, the value of having such free-flowing communication across different projects at Mindtribe proved invaluable.
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