Apr 25, 2016 | By Alec
The Hannover Messe, the world’s leading technology trade fair, opens its doors today and is doubtlessly harboring countless 3D printing innovations. Among them is the latest industrial 3D printer by colorFabb: the Stacker S4, a large and competitively priced four-headed industrial-grade 3D printer that can withstand printing temperatures of 300 degrees Celsius. This enables the S4 to work with any type of filament currently on the market, including colorFabb’s latest colorFabb_HT range of extremely durable and temperature resistant copolyester filaments.
Dutch filament manufacturer colorFabb is known for their excellent range of 3D printing supplies. Founded as a branch of Helian Polymers a few years ago, they have found significant success with a wide range of remarkable filaments. Just last March, they unveiled their latest material solution: colorFabb_HT, a clean copolyester material that is perfect for practical 3D printing applications thanks to its excellent high strength and durability properties, as well as its impressive temperature resistance (up to 100 degrees Celsius). “colorFabb_HT empowers professional users to move beyond prototyping, allowing them to create more durable and useful items,” colorFabb managing director Ruud Rouleaux said of the material. “It’s an engineering material that can be used for real-world applications, making 3D-printed objects fully functional.”
But industrial-level filament such as colorFabb_HT needs to be extruded at high temperatures, something which the Stacker S4 3D printer is more than capable of. Its predecessor, just called Stacker, was realized through a successful Kickstarter campaign just last year. While that was already a very impressive machine, the new and improved S4 is everything professional users and research institutes could look for in an industrial FDM 3D printer. Featuring a strong, powder-coated steel frame, this could be an excellent industrial-grade option for everything from prototyping to quick production.
Like its predecessor, the S4 boasts four nozzles and combines that with a significant build size (14 x 20 x 25 inches or 355 x 525 x 655mm) to enable quick multi-part production. What’s more, three of the nozzles can be easily removed to enable users to fully exploit the excellent building area. “Stacker’s ‘multi-part’ printing technology allows you to print up to four copies of the same part, at the same time, in different colors, and with various types of filament. Why print one part when you can get two, three or four parts at the same time?” its developers say.
But perhaps more impressive is the machine’s universal filament rail. Unsurprisingly, the Stacker S4 can 3D print every filament in the colorFabb catalogue (including nGen, colorFabb_XT and colorFabb_HT), but it is also open to every single filament currently available on the market. “Stacker will accept market rate filaments, and this keeps your printing costs affordable. Our universal filament rail is designed for easy and fast loading of your filament spools. The ‘U’ channel design fits all popular spool sizes,” its makers argue. Even 2.2 kg spools are supported by the S4.
To accommodate those filaments and enable easy 3D printing, the S4 also comes with easy nozzle changing options. “All too often, users print everything with one size outlet diameter (often 0.40mm) because it’s just too slow and tedious to change their nozzle. S4 nozzles can be changed in less than a minute,” they say. “Why restrict yourself to one nozzle size when you could print faster with an 0.80mm nozzle?” The nozzles are also made from a special grade of stainless steel to improve nozzle life when using those corrosive composite filaments. The Dutch developers thus seems to have thought about everything to accommodate such an open range of filaments.
If you’re interested in this remarkable 3D printer, look for colorFabb at the Hannover Messe this week (hall 4, stand C52). The Stacker S4 is expected to be ready for shipping this summer, and can currently be pre-ordered through the Stacker 3D website for just $9.995 (retail is expected to be set at $11.995).
Posted in 3D Printing Application
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