Modix announced a key upgrade to their BIG series of large-format 3D printers.
The company has produced large-scale equipment for quite some time now, and periodically introduces new changes as they receive feedback from customers and new technologies are developed or adopted.
This upgrade, “Generation 5”, seems to be focused on a migration to the latest Duet 3 platform. Duet3D is a UK company that produces advanced control automation hardware for a range of equipment, including 3D printers. They are well known in the industry, and in fact may be found inside many professional and industrial 3D printer models.
The Duet 3 platform is a bit different in that it offers significant support for expansion. In particular, it can make use of CANBUS to set up distributed controller elements in different parts of the machine. This can greatly simplify wiring needs, particularly on large machines such as those produced by Modix.
This should allow Modix to mix and match all sorts of different 3D printing and other tooling in their platform. In fact, they call Generation 5 “a Swiss Army knife”.
They have been using this capability to build out several rather startling features, previously unseen on large-format 3D printers:
- INDX toolchanging: this allows for multimaterial prints without generating significant purge waste. This feature is just barely available on desktop equipment, let alone large-format machines.
- Pellet extrusion toolhead: the idea here is to combine both pellet (for low-cost materials) and filament (for finer details) into the same platform. This should both reduce cost and maintain print quality.
- 45-degree printing: This approach has previously been seen in belt 3D printers, but in this case, Modix intends on using it for simplifying printing of some geometries, potentially saving considerable amounts of money that would otherwise be spent on support structures.
These are intended to be shown to the public at Formnext in November, but we don’t yet know the official release date. However, we do know that they are beta testing the Generation 5 equipment at certain friendly customers.
And that could be just the beginning. It seems that Modix has transformed their BIG series into more of an advanced platform than just a simple 3D printer.
What might they build next on this highly flexible platform? I’m wondering if they are investigating some method of automated print removal, which would reduce labour costs to operate the machine.
Via Modix
