3D Printing Testbed For High Performance and Low Cost

Many 3D printers are either expensive and have high performance or have low cost and low performance. I am building a testbed for 3D printing and the goal is to combine high performance with low cost by using sheet metal and low cost electronics instead of machined parts and industrial PLC. Servos are replacing stepper motors and ground screws are replacing belts. Why? Because 3D printing is a slow process and in order to use it for volume manufacturing the investment must be kept low but the performance has to be high. I will use FDM (or FFF) since it is the most widely used process with many available sub systems on the market and in the open domain. The same principles could be used for other processes, for example ink-jet on metal powder bed which is my speciality.

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