Piocreat’s Industrial 3D Printers: G12 and G40

Did you know that Piocreat produces large-scale 3D printers?

We first saw Piocreat products at Rapid where they were exhibiting with Creality. They showed a somewhat largish desktop 3D printer, but upon closer inspection was actually a pellet-powered device. This was the first commercial pellet desktop device we’ve seen.

Piocreat was formed in 2015, and manufactures industrial-scale 3D printers. Currently they offer a whopping twelve different resin machines, four FGF machines, four “sign” printers (which are low-height 3D printers designed to produce signage), and a good selection of 3D printer resins.

We saw one of their industrial devices, the G12. This is a massive machine, as you can see in the top image. It has an enormous build volume of 1200 x 1000 x 1000 mm, larger than most 3D printers.

It’s not a FFF device, it’s a FGF device. In other words, it uses pellets instead of filament. This is incredibly important for large-format 3D prints that use a lot of material. Pellets can be 10X less expensive than filament, simply because filament is made from pellets. Use of pellets basically cuts out a step in the process, with savings to be made.

The G12 was launched 18 months ago, and has only a single nozzle, meaning there isn’t a possibility of using soluble support material. The nozzle diameter starts at a large 0.6mm, but can be swapped with others up to a huge 6.0mm nozzle diameter. That would enable very fast — but coarse — 3D prints.

There is a huge range of possible materials that can be used in the G12. Piocreat lists them as:

• PLA
• PETG
• ABS
• PC
• TPU
• PVC
• PC+ABS
• PETG+GF
• PP+GF
• PA+GF
• ABS+CF
• PC+CF
• TPE
• PLA+CF
• PA+CF

And more are clearly possible, so long as the polymer pellets are in the range of 2-5mm in diameter. That’s the size window usable by the screw-based extrusion system in the G12.

I would be very careful with the PVC material, as it is possible dangerous gases may be emitted.

The machine isn’t what one would call a high speed device, as its standard print speed is 80-100mm/s. However, with the expanded nozzle sizes, the prints will be done more quickly.

While the G12 is quite large, it isn’t the largest machine made by Piocreat. That would be the massive G40, which has what could be the largest FGF enclosed print volume on the market at a whopping 3400 x 2500 x 1330 mm. To put that in perspective, that’s the equivalent of 1400 standard 200 x 200 x 200 mm build volumes!

In addition, the G40 also includes a CNC function. This allows the machine to smooth off the coarse extrusion edges produced by the printing process.

Via Piocreat