BlackBelt 3D Printer Produces Multiple or Long Parts Without Human Interaction

3D printing has, in some ways, revolutionized what can be made at home. On the other hand, they haven’t really lived up to the…

Jeremy Cook
7 years ago3D Printing

3D printing has, in some ways, revolutionized what can be made at home. On the other hand, they haven’t really lived up to the self-contained factories that many people envisioned. The size of prints is normally limited to the space of your work surface, and if you wan to make multiple parts, you’ll either need to fit them all on a limited area, or tend the machine by hand. Additionally, if you want to make parts with an overhang, you’ll need to generate some sort of supporting structure.

The BlackBelt 3D printer — now available on Kickstarter — takes care of these issues with a novel combination of an angled print head, and an integral belt feed mechanism.

The most obvious, and potentially game-changing feature of this build is that instead of a horizontally stationary extrusion bed, it places extruded material onto a slowly moving conveyor. This allows extraordinarily long parts to be printed. You can even print multiple parts in a row, which slowly roll off of an “assembly line,” reminiscent of how you don’t have to load a piece of paper every time you make a normal print.

Also integral to this design is an extrusion head that sits at 45°, meaning that you can print overhung parts with no supporting structure in many instances. Check it out in the videos seen here, printing storage boxes one after another, and printing a 2m beam as well.

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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