Need help making many larger pieces on many printers

I'm brand new to 3D Printing and wanted to make many larger sized pieces, up to 12" long 1/2" pipe to replace PVC, for a growing system I invented, which will need about 60-70 pieces like this per system. I have a friend with a 3D printer who directed me here for advice on the most cost effective way to do this by getting replicating printer so that I can make many of these printers on my own. I was hoping for a way to replicate at least 10 of these printers for around 150$, or possibly buy one permade if it's that cheap as well. I've seen the ANET A8, which costs around $160, which might work if it can print a 12" pipe vertically. If not, I would need around a 9" x 9" plate to horizontally print a foot long pipe. Any help is greatly appreciated, as I have little knowledge in this area; thank you in advance.

You are 3D printing pipe? I think you'll find buying pipe is always cheaper....

But, if you are determined to go down this route $150 will not make a great printer... It will make a printer that is inefficient, inaccurate and generally a pain in the arse. Many people will tell you they made it work, but they spent alot of time and $$ to turn that machine into something that works. if you are building 10 machines, this is really something you dont want. Expect to multiply that price by a factor of 3, 4 or even 5 and you have the price for a decent-ish machine that will do what you expect it too.

It is cheaper to buy pipe, but I've been advised to make unique parts to market this product, and the normal pipe is the only simple and cheap part of it. I was also thinking of modifying it as well, which would make all pieces custom. Ideally I would want to injection mold the parts, but that would cost way too much money for a start up project. If it costs that much money for a reliable printer and I can only get 1 now, it would take me 10 days to print one system, but I guess that may be my only option if that's all that may work. As long as the parts come out identical and can fit together they will work for me; I'm not too concerned if they look grainy or otherwise unappealing.

I don't think you'll be able to buy a kit that can reliably reproduce that 12" long 1/2" pipe. Most of the cheap chinese kits on the market are usually in the 200x200x(120-160) range. You might find a cheap delta printer that can go taller, but might not be very easy to setup for reliable reproduce-able prints. Especially within your constraint of $150. Even the ANET A8 only has a build volume of 220 x 220 x 240 mm, which would be just over 9" tall.

To find a 3d printer with that build volume is probably going to have to be custom and I highly doubt its even possible to do that for under $500.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2017 11:49AM by PDBeal.

there is always the option to use 3dhubs to get your parts printed, may be cheaper then you don't have to know anything about how a printer works, you only need to send a file of the part you need, you could have 50 made and sent to your house in a week, probably cheaper as well

One way to do this if you are planning on making several systems/have several identical pieces would be to order one of each printed and then use these to make silicone molds and cast the rest from a suitable resin. This is a process I've used several times while doing medium volume production and have found that it most of the times is significantly quicker than printing. Gathering all materials for this can be done for much less than a quality printer capable of printing your parts and has the advantage that all parts will come out exactly the same (given that the casting is done properly).

Excellent suggestions so far; I would just like to point out that the plastic parts would ideally need to be food grade, and last at least a year being exposed to the elements. Let's say I don't print the foot long pipe and only need a 6" x 6" plate, what would a printer cost me that can reliably mass produce? I recently found a 170 lbs injection molding machine that costs less than $3k. The molds cost at most $500 each, so the printers would need to cost significantly less than $4,500 since this makes a part in 2-3 minutes as opposed to 2-3 hours printed.

So are you really trying to find a way to make a cheaper hydroponic system?

I suggest that you design and 3D-print the fittings to join your 12" long 1/2" PVC pipes together, rather than the pipes themselves.

If you're wanting to mass-produce plastic items, 3D-printing is really the wrong technology. For high quality results, 3D printing is very slow.... hours to produce a piece of your pipe rather than minutes. But it doesn't have the $500 setup cost of injection-moulding, so it's good for prototyping. Once you've got the design right, make a mold from the design you developed by 3D-printing, and injection-mould it for mass production.

Bear in mind that 3D-printed objects are often not 100% water-tight, depending on the accuracy of the machine.

Reliability is a tricky question. My rule of thumb is that any 3D printer costs at least $1000. If it costs $150 to buy, then you have $850 worth of fiddling about to get it printing well and reliably. At $1/hr, if you're learning about 3D printing along the way. If you want something that you plug in and just works immediately and every time, plan on spending about $3000.

It all really depends how much you want to print. 3D printing is good in the design phase as you can test new ideas and get a working prototype for little cost. Once you want to start mass producing 3D printing looses its cost advantage due to the time it takes, and depending on the quality of the machine you might have more failed prints. I ran some numbers a few years back for a universal bike mount design and no matter how I did the numbers I always found myself making less than $5 an hour, and that was just printing time, not including design time.

From the information you have given, it sounds like you are out of design and into manufacture. If I were you I would go with the the injection moulding setup. It might be a high up front cost, but with the speed and reliability of the finished parts it wont take long to recover the cost.

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MechaBits
So are you really trying to find a way to make a cheaper hydroponic system?

No, just a more unique model. I am already using the system and even buying premade parts would allow me to sell the product for less than anything else on the market of comparable capability, but I've been told it has to look unique with custom parts to sell well, so that's where I'm at now. I guess in the end I'll have to go with injection molding; it looks to be a cheaper and much faster option for my purposes. I would like to thank everybody in this thread for their input.

I'd make a prototype by a 3Dhub and when customers show interest, you can think of injection molds.
But be aware of legal issues when you send your design files to a 3Dhub. All of a sudden your Intellectual Property ( IP ) is public domain...

A tool for injection moulding could start from $3000 upwards (skies the limit really), but if you are setting up 10 printers the cost is really not far off.... I suggest you enquire at some injection moulding companies. I've done some work in this area and you'd be surprised how cheaply china can do it for you. Just be wary what IP you give them.

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o_lampe
I'd make a prototype by a 3Dhub and when customers show interest, you can think of injection molds.
But be aware of legal issues when you send your design files to a 3Dhub. All of a sudden your Intellectual Property ( IP ) is public domain...

I don't think I've ever heard of a 3Dhub stealing IP and making it public domain.... If they did, you could easily sue them for damages. Conversations are all recorded and it takes place in your own country. Make them sign an NDA if you are worried.

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I don't think I've ever heard of a 3Dhub stealing IP and making it public domain....

You can upload a design to thingiverse and order that part from their platform. And we've seen last year, how thingiverse "protects" your license. Just saying....

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o_lampe

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I don't think I've ever heard of a 3Dhub stealing IP and making it public domain....

You can upload a design to thingiverse and order that part from their platform. And we've seen last year, how thingiverse "protects" your license. Just saying....

Not trying to be aggressive, sorry if it came across that way. A lot of people here make a bit of side earning from 3Dhubs and it's useful to a lot of people, would hate to see people discouraged as it is legitimately useful. Honestly though, if it came to light that Makerbot stole a design from thingiverse that was originally posted by someone else and it wasn't the original posters IP, No one would have a leg to stand on. Thingiverse may be able to assume ownership of things posted to their site but only if the original poster had the right to. This is a problem that exists in any form of manufacturing, no matter what the level of professionalism is... To the OP, if you have a good idea then consider NDA's no matter where you go for production.