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I work in large 3d printing, what is the Sign Industries take on it?

K

KDCI

New Member
Trying to avoid too much self promotion, I work for Cincinnati's Additive division.

We make big printers, they can be used to make signs/sculptures/tooling.

How does your community embrace 3d printing? Do any of you explore it at scale? Desktop 3D Printing?

Also feel free to ask questions about 3D Printing, even if not related to Big 3D printers.
 
G

Gregg Lindsay

New Member
We market some of our smaller flatbed printers with one for rapid jig making. Not very well received unless there is someone familiar with design/modeling and knowledge of the process in house. Usually sits in the box or has a rats nest of filament on the build plate.
 
Gene@mpls

Gene@mpls

New Member
I do a lot of desktop 3D orinting and designing- I think some pictures of the machines/products would be helpful.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
The guy in that music sure likes hitting the sh!t outta that bass drum, huh ??

You have some nice stuff there.You might wanna consider becoming a Merchant Member and try hawking your wares that way. All ya need yet, is a scissors sharpener.
 
White Haus

White Haus

Not a Newbie
KDCI said:
The Main machine that could/has been used in the signage industry is our CI MAAM, it is 1 Meter cubed volume, has a heated chamber, and can print pellets (typically 10x cost savings over filament).
https://www.e-ci.com/maam
Click to expand...

That's a sweet looking piece of equipment. Just out of curiosity, roughly what would something like sell for?

In regards to your original question, I've always been fascinated by 3D printing but can't seem to find a use/way to incorporate to our current product offerings. I know some members around here are into in though.
 
K

KDCI

New Member
Gino said:
The guy in that music sure likes hitting the sh!t outta that bass drum, huh ??

You have some nice stuff there.You might wanna consider becoming a Merchant Member and try hawking your wares that way. All ya need yet, is a scissors sharpener.
Click to expand...
Thanks, you ain't kidding we love the bass. I will check it out thanks for the guidance
 
K

KDCI

New Member
White Haus said:
That's a sweet looking piece of equipment. Just out of curiosity, roughly what would something like sell for?

In regards to your original question, I've always been fascinated by 3D printing but can't seem to find a use/way to incorporate to our current product offerings. I know some members around here are into in though.
Click to expand...

Maybe a quarter million, i understand its probably too much for most sign companies to bite off, but we and other service bureaus do a lot of one off stuff.

I was not certain if companies would be offering sculptures, statues, and things of that nature. Our first customer for example was printing a lot of large pieces for Disney, such as a 3ft mouse hand.

My advice would be to buy a cheap printer and see what you can offer people, a Creality Ender3 is like ~$200, and you print ok sized parts and possibly join them if you would like.
 
G

GB2

Old Member
A short time ago I was considering a 3D printer just to keep up with the technology trend and use it for small or unique items. We also do 3D routing on a CNC router so it would just allow us to be fully in the 3D world. I was considering the ORIGINAL PRUSA I3 MK3S as a first time starter, do you have any experience or opinion about that model?
 
F

FactorDesign

New Member
2D printer by day, 3D printer by night. I've got 9 FDM and 3 resin machines currently. Biggest are 400x400x500 CoreXY machines set up for up to 450C printing. Not quite the 1m^3 of your machines, but I needed to be able to move them through a doorway on my own.
I thought I'd seen articles about dimensional letters being mass 3d printed, but boy after getting into 3D printing, that seems like a lot of hours for a fairly sub par product.
I could see large format 3d printers being used to create assets for trade shows. We've used the Prusa in our shop to make some pretty cool exhibit pieces for museums and one kiosk that paid for the machine 4x over, but otherwise it just kinda collects dust.
 
K

KDCI

New Member
GB2 said:
A short time ago I was considering a 3D printer just to keep up with the technology trend and use it for small or unique items. We also do 3D routing on a CNC router so it would just allow us to be fully in the 3D world. I was considering the ORIGINAL PRUSA I3 MK3S as a first time starter, do you have any experience or opinion about that model?
Click to expand...
Probably the safest printer you could buy. Good choice
 
K

KDCI

New Member
FactorDesign said:
2D printer by day, 3D printer by night. I've got 9 FDM and 3 resin machines currently. Biggest are 400x400x500 CoreXY machines set up for up to 450C printing. Not quite the 1m^3 of your machines, but I needed to be able to move them through a doorway on my own.
I thought I'd seen articles about dimensional letters being mass 3d printed, but boy after getting into 3D printing, that seems like a lot of hours for a fairly sub par product.
I could see large format 3d printers being used to create assets for trade shows. We've used the Prusa in our shop to make some pretty cool exhibit pieces for museums and one kiosk that paid for the machine 4x over, but otherwise it just kinda collects dust.
Click to expand...

Pretty cool - 450C, must be printing some interesting materials. We utilize pellets, which can be extruded much faster and are much cheaper. Still not certain if it would make sense for dimensional letters, possibly a large resin printer and a good spray on coating would do well for that.
 
F

FactorDesign

New Member
KDCI said:
Probably the safest printer you could buy. Good choice
Click to expand...
The Prusa MK3s is excellent. I have 2 of them myself at home and 1 and work. I've got machines that print better, faster, larger, etc... but they all require so much more maintenance and tuning. The MK3s can sit for months (the one at work does), and I just turn it on and it'll lay down a nice print every time.
 
F

FactorDesign

New Member
KDCI said:
Pretty cool - 450C, must be printing some interesting materials. We utilize pellets, which can be extruded much faster and are much cheaper. Still not certain if it would make sense for dimensional letters, possibly a large resin printer and a good spray on coating would do well for that.
Click to expand...
I'm using Slice Mosquito hotends because I wanted a large range of material capability, but CF Nylons are as high as I've gone. I'd want to add a build chamber heater for the really high temp stuff.
 
D

Dukenukem117

New Member
There just aren't many filaments that are great for long term outdoor use. ASA is the only cheap one that comes to mind, and that stuff is a pain to print because of the warping. So printing small brackets and stuff is one thing but anything bigger requires a heated chamber and the printers that have that cost an arm and a leg. Printing is also very slow unless you are willing to sacrifice surface finish and go with a bigger nozzle, though you do get much better layer adhesion and strength.
 
jfiscus

jfiscus

Rap Master
I've still never found a real niche area of the "signmaking industry" that benefits substantially from a 3D printer, at least not our business. I was one of the founding members of GorillaMaker (here near you in the Cincy area) and you do make some awesome larger printers there at Cincinnati, we saw them at IMTS and some of the other shows. We have a router here at our shop and Materials removal is just way faster & cleaner than additive manufacturing for signs.
 
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