At the end of 2014, Taiwan manufacturer Sanwei International launched a consumer grade 3D printer - da Vinci 1.0. Its technical parameters are not outstanding, but its price of 3999 yuan is quite impressive.
What we got is its derivative model, the da Vinci 1.0 AiO that can perform 3D scanning. Although its price of 8999 is not as good as that of the entry version, it has a cool physical scanning function, which can be used to copy various models or parts. After a long time of tossing and turning, let's now see how it works, how it works, and how its printed products actually work.
parameter
3D printing part:
46.8×51×55.8cm，27.5kg
Single nozzle print head
Nozzle diameter 0.4 mm
Monofilament diameter 1.75mm
The maximum print size is 20 × 20 × 19cm
Fine mode 100 μ m/Standard mode 200 μ m
Printing speed: 0.3 mm/s; Ultra fast 0.4 mm/s
Printing materials support ABS resin and PLA (biodegradable plastic polylactic acid), and can be selected from 12 colors of black, red, blue, orange, purple, yellow, blue, indigo, green, white, pink, and grass green
3D scanning part:
Slit laser triangle scanning technology (dual 2M pixel camera+laser diode)
Scanning size (diameter × height): 15 × 15cm
Scanning accuracy: 0.25 mm
Scanning resolution: 0.05mm
Rotary table payload: 3 kg
Accessories and appearance
The packaging of the machine is huge, and the abstract "XYZ printing" on it is actually the name of the manufacturer. The printing technology used by the machine is the fuse manufacturing method (FFF). The single row print head can achieve the printing accuracy of 100 microns at most, and the total body weight is 27.5kg
The accessories include the printing material box, calibration board and power cord in the middle. The accessories on the right are fixed on a piece of cardboard.
Accessory plate
Optical scanner calibration plate
The most commonly used maintenance accessories are three of them: solid glue, shovel and brush for cleaning.
Inside the consumable box is a circle of hot melt printing wire with a diameter of 1.75mm and a weight of 600g.
The size of the machine is similar to that of a half cut refrigerator. The front is a magnetic transparent plastic door, and the two sides are dark blue transparent plastic plates.
The operation area includes a LCD screen and several buttons.
The maximum power of the machine is 480W. The interface slot is equipped with a protective cover. The top, top and bottom are USB-B interfaces commonly used in office equipment, and the bottom is the switch and power interface.
After removing the protective material, the print bin is unexpectedly simple. The printer is an iron frame+plastic cover plate structure. The printing platform is in the middle, and the XY axis track of the print head can be seen on the side.
There are two scanners on both sides.
The core print head of the printer is mounted on a stainless steel track, with a function oriented design and a strong geek flavor.
working principle
By definition, a 3D printer is a device that uses special raw materials to make 3D objects by stacking thin layers. According to the different raw materials and molding principles, they can be divided into deposition molding (flowing out after heating and melting raw materials), photosensitive plastic molding (hardening after ultraviolet light irradiation), laser sintering, etc.
Taking the deposition molding technology with the lowest cost and the highest penetration rate as an example, its working process is very simple (this evaluation of da Vinci 1.0 AiO is exactly this type):
The printing head of the machine can move on the X and Y axes (horizontal front and back, left and right), while the printing platform itself can move on the Z axis (up and down).
The printing material similar to fishing line is heated and melted in the print head, flows out in a fluid state, and hardens and sticks after contacting the printing platform. The moving track of the print head will be "recorded" by these materials. After one layer is completed, the platform moves down, and the machine prints the second layer until the entire object is printed.
Description of body parts
With the simple working principle, there are not many core parts of the machine:
The print head is a heating device that can move accurately on the XY track, which can heat and melt ABS/PLA materials. There is a gear to import raw silk inside.
Open the top cover of the machine and you can see that there is a cooling fan behind the print head.
Its X-axis control motor is on the far right side of the horizontal guide rail, while the Y-axis motor is on the body wall of the printer. Both of them transmit power through the belt (the one parallel to the stainless steel guide rail).
The surface of the printing platform is a glass plate, and the heating wire below it can be seen. Its maximum operating temperature is 90 degrees (to prevent the raw materials falling on the platform from sticking due to low temperature).
It can move up and down on the longitudinal axis, and the power source is the motor at the inner side of the bottom. The power is transmitted by rotating the screw.
The metal sheet on the corner of the platform is also the positioning point for calibrating the platform.
There are three such fixing screws at the bottom of the platform, which can be turned up and down to adjust the horizontal posture of the platform (forward tilt and backward extension, etc.). There is a buffer spring between the screw and the platform to prevent the platform from being "squeezed" by the print head due to misalignment.
The raw material box is a box with raw material wires rolled. There is a chip contact at the bottom so that the printer can identify the type of raw materials and extract the residual/usage information of raw materials. The machine will use different heating temperatures according to the type of raw materials.
LCD display with backlight and control button are used to select working mode, platform calibration, and display simple information such as temperature, progress, calibration value, etc.
control software
The software of the machine is divided into printing and scanning, both of which are quite simple.
The printing software named XYZware is responsible for importing and converting 3D modeling files, and can preview and shift the files. The software supports the most common 3D modeling files such as. stl. 3w (modeling files can basically be converted to these two formats). The machine preview function is very simple. You can only change the viewing angle and zoom in and out, but you can't change the fixation point, which is a little inconvenient to use.
Its editing function is also relatively simple. When the model is rotated in space, the starting rotation angle will be directly reflected on the final printed finished product.
For junior players, the manufacturer's website also has a special 3D model library, which contains the works of other users and professional artists. The number of materials is enough for everyone to play for a year. In addition to the most popular manual work, the mobile phone case is naturally indispensable, but only the free modeling files of iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 are available for the time being.
The files can be previewed and downloaded online, and they also have relevant print configuration suggestions.
Print time prediction
Settings page
Before printing, the machine will slice the 3D modeling file (which can be understood as N times of transverse slicing of the model), and then you can view the position, size, volume and other information of the 3D model. Before printing, you can set the base and bracket to control the filling density, shell thickness, printing speed and printing thickness of the 3D model (control the layer thickness of the horizontal stack. It supports four thicknesses of 100/200/300/400 microns. The smaller the value, the finer the finished product will be).
Printing process
The consumables box is made of ABS and PLA materials, with 600g of built-in raw materials, available in 12 colors: black, red, blue, orange, purple, yellow, blue, indigo, green, white, pink, and grass green.
The left is the finished product made of ABS material, and the right is the finished product made of PLA material
The main difference between the two materials is in the melting point. The ABS melting point is about 220 degrees, which is opaque and matt. The platform needs to be heated to 90 degrees to form normally; The melting point of PLA is about 200 degrees, the density is larger and harder, and the translucent texture is more bright. The platform needs to be heated to 45 before it can be formed normally. When printing, the ABS material will have a smell of burning plastic after melting, while the smell of PLA will be much lighter.
Before printing, the machine needs to heat the print head and the platform. The former can be warmed up in 1-2 minutes, but the platform needs about 5-6 minutes to rise from normal temperature to 90 degrees. Therefore, the biggest difference between the two materials is that the latter has shorter warm-up time and slightly faster printing speed.
Before printing, the attached solid adhesive should be coated on the platform. The main purpose of the latter is to prevent the adhesion between the finished product and the platform and facilitate the removal of the finished product.
At the beginning of printing, the printing platform will be raised to the highest point. The print head will move left and right on the plastic scraper on the edge of the platform to scrape off the residual raw materials on the nozzle, and then it will print two test lines on the edge of the platform to clear the raw materials that have "stayed" for too long in the nozzle (the raw materials that have stayed for too long may be burnt and discolored).
After that, when the machine printed itself, the speed and power of the three motors of the XYZ axis of the machine were different. At the same time, the sound was more sensible. The volume was about 5 or 60 decibels. As long as it was not placed in the bedroom, it would not cause too much noise to the surrounding areas.
Correction and maintenance
When the machine leaves the factory, it has been assembled and the printing platform has been leveled. After we get the machine and remove the packaging, we can print directly.
However, the movement of the platform during use and the removal of the finished product (sometimes the glue is not enough, and the adhesion between the finished product and the platform is too tight, so the attached shovel needs to be used for violent stripping) may cause slight displacement, thus affecting the molding quality, and even the machine nozzle may not be able to discharge material in serious cases.
Fortunately, the platform has a buffer spring, which will not cause substantial damage if it is not calibrated. At most, there will be an unpleasant sound of the nozzle rubbing against the glass.
There are three adjustment screws under the printing platform. Rotate them to adjust the position of the platform up and down. Turn on the calibration mode of the machine, and the machine nozzle will touch the calibration point of the platform to get three deviation values. According to the value, you can twist the screw to adjust the platform.
But the whole process is quite energy consuming and full of slots: first, why should the calibration platform wait for the platform and nozzle to heat up? And the heating process is extremely slow; The position of the correction point and adjustment screw is completely different! Heavy! Close!, When tightening the screws, the values of the two measuring points may be changed at the same time, and the influence amplitude is different! The manual says that "every turn of the screw corresponds to a reading difference of 50", but in fact this value is not constant.
In order to control the accuracy, only one screw can be moved for each adjustment, and it takes about 2 minutes for each correction reading. In fact, I was devastated when correcting, and finally understood why the official didn't recommend users to adjust the platform by themselves
Other maintenance work includes cleaning the nozzle. The attached iron brush and fine wire are used for this occasion. The former is directly used to scrape off the adhesive plastic on the nozzle, while the latter is used to poke into the nozzle pipe. They are effective and easier to use than correction.
Scanning function
The upper left and lower right corners inside the machine are two scanning sensors.
Each sensor contains a transmitter and receiver, as well as a 2 megapixel camera.
They need to be used together with the scanning software at the PC end. The sensor emits a red plane laser beam, and the rotating platform at the bottom will rotate with the scanning sample. The collected object space point information will be Save the file in STL format.
It is better to turn off the light when scanning to prevent affecting the operation of the optical scanner, because the cabin door is made of transparent material, and too strong light will affect the machine's reading of the reflected laser beam.
During scanning, there will be real-time images (2 million pixels) and data points on the right.
The scanned documents can be viewed, flipped, and precision controlled.
In actual use, although the scanning speed is very fast (about 5 minutes), there are many restrictions on the scanning function. Basically, the material characteristics that will cause abnormal light scattering will affect the scanning effect: the object height is too low, the color is too deep, the color variety is too many, the surface is too smooth, the pit is too complex, and the internal depth is too large, which will affect the final effect.
It is certainly not a problem to use it to scan simple geometry, but I'm sorry to tell you that if you want to use it to scan complex manipulations, even as high as models, it is almost hopeless
Printing speed&precision
Time consuming display of machine printing
Civil 3D printer based on molten deposition technology is much slower than normal people think. With the default standard precision, the following hollow watch case (3.75g object) is printed according to the thickness of each layer of 300 microns, which takes half an hour. The printing time is proportional to the layer thickness. When it is set to 100 microns, it will take 1.5 hours. In addition, the printing speed of ABS/PLA materials is almost the same (both are very slow).
Unfortunately, before printing, the machine can accurately calculate the required wire length according to the slice data of the model. Because the threading speed is constant, we can get quite accurate time prediction, at least we don't have to wait for it.
Watch case printed with standard precision
The front can see the printer's filling grid inside the object
In terms of print quality, many people think that the finished products of 3D printers can be used as the final products, but in fact they are more like blanks. If the requirements for shape and precision are high, the finished products themselves can be seen only after being polished again.
The printing accuracy of da Vinci 1.0 is a standard level, and the quality in the layer is higher than that of the layer junction (nonsense). You can see the raw materials stacked in each layer on the side. After knowing the layer thickness, we can even calculate the actual height of the finished product according to the number of layers.
The longitudinal arrangement at the corner of the finished product is relatively regular, which indicates that the precision of the machine print head is relatively high, and the machine body does not vibrate too much.
The upper part is the finished product with the highest precision of 100 microns, and the lower part is the product with the default precision of 300 microns. Because the finer the fuse, the better the bonding, so the finished product in high-precision mode should be more solid.
Choosing different filling density will also affect the internal filling form of the finished product. The left side of the figure above uses the default precision and filling mode; The right side is the thickening mode, and the interior of the finished product even adopts a structure similar to the stiffener.
ABS on the left and PLA on the right
Print the same case, with ABS material on the left and PLA material on the right
Under different precision, the main change is the width of the raw material hot fuse. Although it has a huge impact on the printing speed, its impact on the weight of the finished product is far less than the material.
Newly baked PLA finished products
The finished products printed with semi transparent PLA materials are more complex and beautiful in texture because of their transparency, but there is no obvious difference in fineness.
A watch case printed for a smart watch
Despite the surface fineness, 3D printing can still meet the accuracy requirements of many products. The newly printed watch case can be inserted perfectly even without adjustment (a back cover will be designed later...).
summary
At the end of 2014, the machine has been on the shelves of JD, Amazon, Taobao and Suning Yigou (they also sold 3D printers...). The price of da Vinci 1.0 AiO is now about 8500 yuan, while the basic version without 3D scanning function is about 4700 yuan, and its consumables box is 199 yuan. A box of consumables includes 600g of raw materials, which can print nearly 600g of finished products, and its price is relatively affordable.
Although there are many cheaper 3D printers on the market, the size of objects they can print is far less than that of da Vinci 1.0. In terms of the size of finished products, it is still one of the best 3D printers in terms of cost performance. However, problems such as unscientific use process, slow printing speed, insufficient surface accuracy, and troublesome calibration are also common problems of 3D printers at the same price.
However, the most unfortunate thing is that its 3D scanning function is really less practical. It is recommended that enterprises or geeks who want to cut their hands directly choose the ordinary version without scanning function. In addition, remember not to move the machine and calibration platform after unpacking
