After years of improvement, the desktop 3D printer has finally come into the market. It uses conveyor belts instead of traditional building blocks to provide theoretically unlimited construction. Unfortunately, they require a very high premium. Even Creativity, a company known for cheap printers, costs $1000.
But if you are willing to work hard, Adam Fasnacht thinks he may have a solution. He made open source modifications to the Ender 3 Pro, turning reasonably priced printers into the main force with sharp edges and corners. We may not say it is cheap; In addition to the base price of the printer of $240, you need to purchase components of $200 to $300, plus the plastic cost of 24 components needed to complete the conversion. But compared with the products on the market, it is still very competitive.
If there is a problem, the only source of the conveyor belt and the improved nozzle used in this design is [Adam]’s website PowerBelt3D. It may be said that this is a bit like distributing razors and selling blades, but to be fair, nothing here seems to prevent you from taking out replacement parts.
We believe that if you have the right equipment, the slender nozzle (which is necessary for approaching the inclined bed) will not be too bad. But [Adam] said that he spent more than two years developing his Formula32 belt, so if you want to produce similar products internally, you may have a lot of work to do.
We have high expectations for early competitors like Printrbelt, but these early attempts may just be ahead of their times. These days, there are so many cheap 3D printers in the market that need to be built. We may be at the forefront of the revival of belt printers.