I’ve been pretty vocal about how 3D printing is the key to surviving the pandemic. Whether it’s instantly printing face-shields, prototyping respirators, or just relying less on overseas prototyping companies to supply you with prototypes, 3D-printers can help you ideate, test, and produce your designs faster… and it’s only a matter of time before they become an integral part of studios, schools, hospitals, and businesses. Norston Fontaine, the man behind Stacker’s F1 3D Printer agrees too.
Fontaine’s dedicated his life to perfecting his craft and designing 3D printing machines that are consumer-friendly, yet state-of-the-art. The F1 3D printer is just remarkably versatile in the number of filaments and materials it can handle, as well as incredibly accurate too, with a build quality that Fontaine prides himself in. Take a look at some of the F1’s prints and you’ll be surprised at the immaculate surface quality and detail, and the very visible lack of stringing, or blemishes caused by over-extrusion. The F1 3D printer comes with Stacker’s special hot ends fitted with Vanadium-alloy-coated nozzles that are guaranteed to last a lifetime. The F1’s hot ends are easily replaceable too, allowing you to effectively choose between different nozzle sizes as well as making maintenance easier. The hot ends use a direct-drive extrusion system that helps it achieve perfectly consistent prints every time, and a temperature-monitoring sensor immediately pauses the job if it detects any overheating – a feature that’s extremely useful during long print-cycles. The entire F1 is designed and manufactured in the USA, all the way from the controller-board and the firmware, to the actual printer frame itself that comes fitted with special vibration dampeners to increase the printer’s overall accuracy.
The F1 is just one part of Stacker’s innovation in 3D printing. The other part is what Fontaine likes to call his secret sauce – dry filament printing. Atmospheric moisture (even in small amounts) can end up having an effect on filaments by changing how they melt, extrude, and set. The F-BOX (which can be universally added to any existing 3D printer) is a special dehumidifying container that holds the filament reel. It comes with an industrial-grade desiccating agent that helps absorb atmospheric moisture to keep the filament as dry as possible. The desiccants change color when they’ve absorbed all the moisture they can hold – and once they begin turning from their bright orange to a dull green, they can simply be recharged by being popped in a food dehydrator or microwave (allowing you to use them infinitely). The F-BOX increases the potential of your filament, and can be mounted on or connected to any existing printer to give you better results. If you’re the kind to buy filaments in bulk, the Stacker team even offers the F-PAC, a large cartridge of desiccant that can be stored along with your filaments, keeping humidity away to increase their shelf-life.
With the F1, Fontaine hopes our futures will be more self-reliant when it comes to quick prototyping and fabrication. The F1 is an incredibly advanced printer that’s been calibrated and tested over time to produce consistent results, but at the same time, it’s just as easy to use as any consumer-grade 3D printer. The F1 even took a stab at the Autodesk/Kickstarter FDM print test and the results are impressive, to say the least. Along with the F-BOX and the F-PAC, Stacker’s F1 3D printer brings an entire prototyping station into your home. It was designed to accelerate the movement towards relying less on external sources and embracing the ability to ideate, prototype, and produce right from the comfort of your own workspace.
Designers: Norston Fontaine & Team Stacker
Click Here to Buy Now: $2100 $3000 ($900 off). Hurry, only 57 left! Raised over $240,000.
STACKER F1 3D Printer – The Essential Office Machine
Built for every type of business, school, or organization, the F1 is a true industrial grade printer, so this means it’s perfect for work groups big and small. It’s also ideal for print farms and maker spaces. The F1 is a high performance printer with advanced safety features. This means it’s safe enough for hospitals, research labs, schools, offices, and of course, your home.
Why the F1? Safety, Print Quality & Reliability
Safety – Many users run their printers unattended. That’s why they built a printer with unmatched safety features.
Advanced thermal runaway protection. What’s thermal runaway? Basically, it’s when your hot end keeps heating up and won’t shut down until you cut the power. This can happen if your controller board fails, the temp sensor fails, the temp sensor gets dislodged from the heater block, or your firmware freezes and fails to reset.
Most printers on the market today only rely on firmware to protect against thermal runaway. Software is not good enough. To make matters worse a lot of cheap printers didn’t even enable these basic software protections, even though they are built into the firmware. In the vast majority of cases firmware protection works well at protecting you. However, no firmware is going to protect you if it crashes or if you experience a controller board or temp sensor failure.
The F1 solution. That’s why the F1 incorporates redundant specialty electronic power cut-off circuits. These specialty circuits are completely independent from the firmware or other software controls. In other words, a bad transistor or crashed firmware is not going to prevent the specialty safety circuit from doing its job. The F1 also uses two temp sensors for added security. That’s right, two temp inputs, and each input is run through its own specialty circuit. If the circuit reads a temp higher than 325 C it will cut the power to your hot end. Please see the illustration below.
Better temp sensors, mounted better. The F1 uses PT100 temperature sensors made from Platinum, so they are extremely reliable. Furthermore, we designed our hot end to specifically prevent the temp sensors from dislodging during use. First, we use TWO temp sensors to add redundancy, as mentioned above. Second, we use multiple fastening points to retain the sensors. Third, our temp sensors are potted into metal cartridges, which allows us to attach them more securely. Finally, we engineered the cable management of the hot end wires to further prevent the sensors from coming loose.
Special hot end heat break and heat sink. We also use a special Bi-Metallic heat break sourced from Slice Engineering to keep the heat in the heater block instead of migrating upward into the rest of the hot end assembly. Not only does this improve the printing process, it makes the hot end safer overall. Finally, we designed our own heat sink to bleed off any excess heat that rises from the heat break.
The filament drive and hot end mount uses UL approved flame retardant materials for an extra level of safety. The hot end heat sink and heat break were designed to bleed off the heat before it can rise and damage the other components on the print head.
Insulated and guarded heater block. The stainless steel guard around the heater block helps reduce severe burning. It still gets very hot, so be careful!
All connectors are genuine MOLEX brand, not some cheap offshore knockoff found on many 3D printers. Moreover, we selected connectors that are rated to carry at least double the circuits required amperage. If that wasn’t enough, we only use glow wire rated connector housings. This means that if you take a hot iron (the glow wire) and pushed it into the connector, the connector would just melt instead of burning up.
Special Z rod guards protect your hair and fingers from getting pinched or wrapped up. Each Z Axis lead screw gets its own guard. This also keeps the lead screws cleaner and reduces maintenance.
Advanced firmware. The F1 uses a modular firmware by Repetier that includes the standard thermal runaway protections found in other firmwares, but it also includes a watchdog system that helps identify firmware crashes. If a crash is detected it resets the printer to rectify the situation.
F1 Print Quality
How do you achieve best-in-class print quality? You do it by getting rid of resonance, zero crossing moire patterns, ringing, z wobble, thermal banding, and other artifacts that show up in your prints. This requires engineering, proper selection of components, and lot’s of testing.
Engineering. We started by making the F1 frame and gantry system as strong and rigid as we could. The frame is then perfectly squared during assembly, and will stay that way for the life of the printer (unless you drop it off your desk onto a concrete floor!). Next, we engineered a simple but effective chassis dampening system using visco-elastic polymer because it has a very high dampening coefficient. It combines shock absorption, good memory, vibration isolation and vibration damping characteristics. Cheap rubber feet would have saved us a lot of money, but that’s not what the F1 is about.
Next, we designed the best filament drive and hot end we could. Our filament drive uses our special filament drive gears and gear reduction design for increased power and precision. The drive gears are hardened steel and the reduction gears are stainless steel, not plastic. The F1 hot end is all metal and carbon fiber ready. The key to making a high performance hot end that works with a large spectrum of filament types is to use a heat break that has the highest temp gradient you can find.
Accuracy: 3D printing is about more than just creating “perfect” and pretty looking prints. Best-in-class print quality is also about parts that are accurate, and fit together. Parts that have sharp corners and no over extrusion.
The F1’s firmware incorporates a hot end pressure balancing feature that reduces the extruder movement precisely as needed before the hot end reaches any portion of the part that slows down. This allows the pressure inside the hot end to release and do the extruding instead of the filament drive. It’s clever and it works great. In fact, the F1 doesn’t require any slicer tricks, like coasting or wiping (combing).
Here is an example of the quality you can expect from your new F1.
Reliability: Better by design. We all know that hot ends jam for a variety of reasons. The cause is usually wet filament, improper retract settings, bad temp settings, poor quality filament (bad diameter tolerance or debris in the filament) and bad hot end engineering. Oh, leaving the hot end idle at full temp for a few hours is another great way to jam your hot end! If you’re like us you’re not perfect, that’s why the F1 hot end can be changed in seconds. This makes it fast and easy to change nozzles too.
Premium Components: Lets take a close look at the 600 watt power supply built by Artesyn. The price of this key component is over $250. The power supply incorporates PFC (power factor correction) which ensures that input voltage and current waveforms are as sinusoidal as possible. Besides, PFC is required by international regulations. Cheap power supplies don’t use PFC and are not as reliable. The F1 3D Printers’ power supply carries a 2 year warranty and should run for many years under normal use.
STACKER F1 Features
– T-Slot Accessory Rail: Use the upper rail to mount your tool caddy, webcam, filament spool holders, etc
– Zero Maintenance V-Slot Wheels: ultra smooth, no noise linear motion
– Quad-Gear Filament Drive: powerful and flex filament ready
– Quick Change Hot Ends: swap nozzle sizes fast, all metal, 310C max temp
– Hardened Steel Nozzle: a must for abrasive filaments, made by Slice Engineering
– Dual Heater Blocks: faster and more even heat distribution for more even extrusion
– Redundant Electrical Cut-Off Circuits: These special circuits guard against thermal run-away of the hot end, the most critical part in any 3d printers. Provides: an extra safeguard beyond the standard firmware protections (firmware alone is not enough!), a must for safer printing, uses dual PT100 temp sensors for even more reliability
– Ultra Flat Print Bed: with auto bed leveling,a flat bed is key for proper fitting parts, bed leveling is, and should only be, for adjusting first layer heights to the particular bed surface
– Print Bed: Cast aluminum precision ground, with a 300 watt silicone mat heater and “Level Once” bed levelers.
– Carry Handle and LED Light Bar: comfortable grip and looks cool
– Customizable Front Logo Plate: print your own in the color you like
– Dual Z Screw Guards: keeps hands and hair safe
– 600 Watt Industrial Grade PSU: PFC type for EU regulations, smoothes out A/C pulses, more efficient, quiet, safe, reliable. Artesyn model LCM600Q-N
– Stacker Designed 32bit Electronics: faster printing, smoother and quieter operation, advanced safety features built-in
– Wire free controller box: eliminates the potential for shorted wires and reduces heat and complexity
– Genuine Molex Brand Glow Wire Electrical Connectors: Safest connectors on the market, oversized to easily handle the current loads.
– Motor Drivers: ultra quiet type for smooth operation
– High Resolution Stepper Motors: 2X more precision over standard motors
– Ultra-Rigid Frame and Ganty: superior prints at a faster pace
– Flexplate System with BuildTak PC and PEI Bed Surfaces: optional nylon surface also available
– Visco-elastic Dampening System: reduces noise and vibration, better print quality, won’t mar your table top
– Repetier Firmware: our custom version uses advanced motion planning and pressure balancing hot end controls to prevent over extrusion
– Repetier Server Software (requires dedicated pc, linux embedded device, or Pi): the best way to control your printer from any web enabled device, webcam option, time lapse, and a host of other amazing features, enterprise ready, NO WIFI for increased security (you can add WIFI with a Pi, we strongly recommend ethernet)
– Slicing software: One licence for Simplify3D, powerful and highly accurate slicing, multiple process feature, fantastic multi material print capabilities and the industry standard for generating support structures that break away cleanly.
– 285 x 285 x 285 mm Print Size: big prints from compact desk-sized printer
– Compact Frame: fits on your desk
– Filament Spool Location: Multiple mounts available for front, top, rear mounting
– F-BOX Compatible: Mounts in multiple locations
– Made in the USA
Print Bed Surfaces
Genuine BuildTak brand flex plate and sheets.
The filament drive because is so strong, and so light. It integrates the following components into a single 3D printed production part.
– adjustable print head mounting bracket
– filament out sensor bracket
– fan mount bracket
– ABL sensor mount
– blower mount bracket
– hot end attachment bracket
– wire and cable management
– filament guide tube mount
– belt guard
Click Here to Buy Now: $2100 $3000 ($900 off). Hurry, only 57 left! Raised over $240,000.
View of ISS Nadir from Departing Soyuz TMA-20 Spacecraft, Complete ISS stack including Space Shuttle Endeavour and Automated Transfer Vehicle Kepler, Low Earth Orbit, Space, Photograph by Paolo Nespoli 
Interior Space: A Visual Exploration of the International Space Station 
Port Hatch with Mission Stickers and Memorabilia European Laboratory – Columbus, International Space Station, Low Earth Orbit, Space, Photograph by Paolo Nespoli and Roland Miller 
Cupola with Clouds and Ocean, International Space Station, Low Earth Orbit, Space, Photograph by Paolo Nespoli and Roland Miller 
View from Starboard into Node 2 and Japanese Experiment Module, European Laboratory – Columbus, International Space Station, Low Earth Orbit, Space, Photograph by Paolo Nespoli and Roland Miller 
View of Port Hatch into Node 3, Node 1 – Unity, International Space Station, Low Earth Orbit, Space, Photograph by Paolo Nespoli and Roland Miller 
