With Stefan’s last day on parental leave, he and Tom get together once more to talk about the developments in the 3D printer scene. It seems like Belt printers are making a comeback, Fusion360 is again making drastic changes and E3D have somewhat quietly released their hybrid manufacturing toolhead for the toolchanger.

After another short break due to Stefan becoming a father, both talk about recent projects involving 3D scanners & sublimating 3D scanning spray. News cover KFC planning to print with lab meat in Russia, 3D printing gunpowder, a Standard for Open Hardware and Open Source Computer Vision Algorithms for print correction. Due to recent events, both rant about an allegedly “fully” 3D printed motorcycle, 3D printed houses, and how Kickstarters rarely are used anymore for what they should. Questions cover, exotic material printing, printing services, and testing out your designs for different printing technologies.

3D Printed “meat” is the hot topic right now! Stefan and Tom cover two approaches that aim to print texture into vegan “steak” and “salmon”. Both look promising, but like with most 3D printed food, the hard challenges remain to be solved.
Can a huge show like Formnext happen in the current pandemic? Apparently the answer is “yes”, as TCT Asia has just finished.
Staying with Asia, Creality is reporting record shipments for the month of march – but might be infringing on a patent with their latest model!

After thinking about buying a lathe for ages, Stefan finally bought himself a new machining tool for the workshop. Tom shares his own experience with his Mini Lathe. Tom recently received a Prusa Mini and talks about his first impressions as well as some plans for it in his upcoming 3D Printing Beginners Series on YouTube. Both discuss the recent theft of fellow YouTuber Heliox’ channel and a new “Ultra Fast” printing process that slightly resembles an old CRT television as well as locally pre-heating a print for better layer adhesion. Miele released some printable upgrades for their appliances, so Tom and Stefan discuss the feasibility of these parts and what we could see in the future. Topic of the week is the maintenance of 3D printer – how much is necessary and what to regularly check? Questions cover automatic bed change and the applicability of a filament-width sensor.

Lots of interesting topics this time! Tesla is apparently using last-minute 3D printed parts in the first Model Ys they delivered; Adrian Bowyer is proposing a novel print removal system; and the US Army has been working on a non-homogeneous 3D printing filament.
But Stefan and Tom haven’t been idle, either and have been working on the Toolchanger and on finally getting an old CNC working. All that and more in this episode of The Meltzone Podcast!

Notes and timestamps:
3:50 Getting married in special times

13:42 Tom’s Sienci CNC adventures

21:24 Stefan’s experience with the E3D toolchanger & discussion on the Creality CR-6 SE
https://e3d-online.com/tc-ms
https://creality.com/cr-6-se-3d-printer-crowdfunding-on-6th-may-p00296p1.html
33:17 Correction on SeeMeCNC’s efforts of injection molding faceshield frames
https://twitter.com/SeeMeCNC/status/1244760010514739200?s=19
35:10 Adrian Bowyer’s print ejector concept
https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/adrian-bowyer-releases-proposal-for-continuous-unattended-3d-printing-system-171135/
46:20 Tesla is patching production Model Y with FDM 3D printed parts
https://insideevs.com/news/410927/tesla-3d-printing-fix-model-y-hvac/amp/
https://www.fabbaloo.com/blog/2020/4/21/the-very-good-reason-3d-printed-parts-were-found-in-the-tesla-model-y
51:00 FabLab Munich’s open-source metal 3D printer (FabMX)
https://www.heise.de/make/meldung/FabMX-Open-Source-Projekt-will-einen-Metall-3D-Drucker-entwickeln-4700614.html
58:08 US Army’s reinforced 3D printing filament
https://newatlas.com/multi-polymer-3d-printer-filament/
Full paper: █████████████████████████████████████████
1:04:10 Brook Drumm is back on his feet
https://www.patreon.com/posts/bankruptcy-new-36365339
1:08:52 PTFE 3D printing by 3M
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/design-and-specialty-materials-us/3d-printing/
1:19:40 Questions

It’s The Meltzone Lockdown edition! Tom is running out of home improvement store goods while Stefan is holding himself over with VR and finally building his E3D Toolchanger.
We’re also talking about printing faceshields and other PPE and how getting organized is really important right now.
Also, Makerbot is supposedly opening up their Method 3D printer to filaments from other manufacturers.
In the questions, we cover filament diameter conversions, building a new printed CNC and Autodesk’s patent on non-planar slicing.

On this content packed episode, Tom and Stefan talk about their recent live streaming efforts, VR, the newly added FFF slicer in Fusion360 and why Stefan thinks it’s a challenge to add gears to his new plastics shredder. There are currently a lot of efforts being done to use 3D printing for medical equipment due to the current Corona pandemic. Both discuss the positive and negative sides of those and why there also can be a danger in printing medical supplies. There is a “new Thingiverse” but is it better than the old one? Tom and Stefan try to answer viewer/listener questions on high power lasers in SLA printers, the right material for 3D printed CNCs, if E3D really performs quality control, if Fusion360 might implement non-planar slicing, trouble with white filament, under-water curing and their favorite thread profiles for 3D printed parts.

Update: After the blanket travel ban from Europe, MRRF has officially been canceled / postponed. In this episode, we talk about Stefan’s new Toolchanger, more use cases for LW-PLA and our (back then still relevant) plans for MRRF 2020!

Tom and Stefan talk about the upcoming events that they’ll attend including Malta Maker Fair and MRRF2020. Both recently released a material testing video and discuss if resin prints are really isotropic and why lattice or porous structures performs the way they do. Tom got kicked from the Amazon.com affiliate program and explains how that happened. Stefan got a new Pellet Extruder and expresses his first experience with it. Both talk about the impact of the Chorona Virus on the China and the 3D printing industry. The Makerbot Classroom Sketch was unveiled recently – is it worth $1800? Questions cover copyright on Thingiverse uploads, ceramic hotend liners, dimensional issues of high prints an the Dragon Hotend.

Flashforge first cloned Makerbot – and now it looks like Makerbot are selling Flashforge’s machines? That and a discussion on the (non) availability of the Elegoo Mars Pro, our take on Linus’ “I’ve been thinking about retiring” stream and our pros and cons to using “servos” on 3D printers in this episode of The Meltzone!