i.materialise buys a Makerbot!
Our software development team and most of our customer services team are in Kiev, Ukraine. Since we don”t have a production facility there they aren”t surrounded by 3D printers like the rest of us here in Belgium. To compensate the team bought and built a Makerbot. One of the main reasons for getting it was to show job applicants going through the interview process a 3D printer in action. Franky (our designer) took some pictures of the wonderful little device while he was over there. The team loves it and enjoyed building it very much.
The first thing the team 3D printed was the Materialise Ukraine logo.
Maksym, one of the builders reports that, “It took 3 evenings * 3 hours each * 5.5 people = 49.5 man hours to assemble the thing. The build went smoothly but they did have some issues,
- Initially it was difficult for plastic to stick to the platform:
- When the structure is flat and thick it starts to deform and peel off the platform
- Small details can cause plastic to stuck in one place and then this pile of plastic can cause the nozzle hit the part. This causes the coordinates to shift.
- Plastruder (heating extruding thing) came off – had to fix it.
- Fixed plastruder incorrectly – had to re-fix it.
- Short circuit appeared in heating element – had to fix it one more time.”
Below is the shot of the team celebrating the successful build.
We”re glad that all of our colleagues in Kiev now have a 3D printer.
