Went and brought my files to be printed to the high school where my friend teaches. The place was freaking awesome! I was SO jealous of the machinery, and the skills and abilities these kids are learning there. Between the woodshop, the CNC mills and routers, all the welders, the laser cutters, 3D printers of all kinds, and I'm sure plenty other stuff I didn't get to see on my tour, you could easily make a pinball machine from scratch there. My eyes were bugging out of my head. I was trying to figure out a way to enroll myself there!
Anyway, I see the 3D printers all along the counter on one side of a room that's filled with all manner of machinery and even a few Caterpillar driving simulators and think about what materials they've got in them and how long a single part is going to take. Then he turns me around and shows me the actual printer he's going to print my stuff on. It's the size of a damn refrigerator! It's a StrataSys F370, which I now know is a beast of a printer. He goes and checks the filament drawer to see what's in it, and it's got ABS ready to go. Then we bring up the parts in his slicer and not only does he offer to print all four parts I bought(I only really needed one pair of the two), but he's able to print all of them in ABS at 80% infill. The print took 5hrs 29min. I'll pick them up from his house sometime this weekend.
I don't know if I was more stunned by his generosity or the printer my parts were printed on and how they're going to turn out. I can't wait to get them and test them out. Here's a pic of that printer that I'm sure some of you will drool over. Trust me, the rest of their shops there were filled with all manner of equally impressive machinery from all the top manufacturers. Oh, the things I could build there in a weekend......
F370