Leasing Options to Purchase an EDGE 3D Printer

Greensboro, NC – Fusion3 has recently partnered with Financial Group Partners to offer customers an array of competitive leasing options to finance the purchase of an EDGE 3D printer.

“We at Fusion3 are excited to partner with Financial Group Partners to offer the best financing deals on the market today. Financing allows our customers to acquire Fusion3 3D printers with minimal initial expenditures. Since Financial Partners Group offers no down payment, our customers can obtain the equipment they need without significantly affecting their cash flow,” stated Hayden Holleman, Sales & Marketing Associate.

Financial Group Partners

Financial Group Partners have the ability to work with both small and large U.S. businesses to tailor a leasing solution and structure to meet your financial requirements. Financial Group Partners offers Fusion3 customers the following benefits:

• Low rates and competitive structures
• Application only up to $500,000
• 3 & 6 month deferrals
• $0 down w/ terms up to 72 months
• eDocs available
• Pre-funding available
• No pre-payment penalty

Special Note: Section 179 Tax Savings allows you to subtract the cost of certain types of assets from your balance sheet. Qualified purchases can be written off as an expense during the purchase year.

Whether leased or purchased, equipment may still qualify for the deduction under Section 179. Fusion3 is proud to offer customers increased flexibility in payment options to better meet customer needs. Leased equipment allows you to pay less upfront, pay monthly, and still receive 100% deduction under section 179 – lowering out of pocket expenses.

Want more information about competitive leasing options? Contact us today!

How to Recover ANVIL Print Head Tubes

We have a new video out on how to recover and reuse ANVIL print head tubes that are jammed.  Check it out below!

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Hot on the heels of our release of F3Slic3r, we’ve been working hard on finishing up the profiles for existing machines and approved materials. We’re excited to announce the release of F400 printer profiles, as well as additional material profiles for F400/F410, and tweaks to EDGE profiles! This release means that all existing approved materials now have a profile in F3Slic3r.

We’ve discovered a little hiccup in the updater in this version of F3Slic3r, so your software may not automatically notify you that new profiles are available. To ensure you have the latest profiles, please follow the instructions in the video below.

NEW Scrub Plate Spacer

Here at Fusion3, we’re strong believers in continuous improvement: Our hardware, our software, and our business operations.  We’re excited to announce a hardware improvement for EDGE that will enhance your printer’s reliability and ease of use, and is a quick 5 minute installation.

The scrub plate spacer is a new part that is installed under the scrub plate, on the bed assembly.  This part replaces the stack of washers and washer retention o-ring on each screw.  We recommend all EDGE users upgrade at your earliest convenience, even if you’re not currently having any issues with your nozzle offset calibration.

Fusion3’s customer support team deals with a wide range of issues daily. One topic we see come up regularly is folks running “calibration” tests, “benchmark prints,” or related, and being confused or upset with the results they get on their Fusion3 printers.

Our goal with this blog post is to explain why these tests are poorly suited for our equipment, and why they don’t provide useful information on how to improve your print results. We’ll also suggest some common fixes and alternative approaches so you can get the information you’re after.

Why Common Hobbyist Calibration Tests Do Not Work on Fusion3 Printers

First, let’s discuss some common calibration and test prints we see people run, and encounter issues with:

• 3DBenchy
• Temperature towers
• 10mm or 20mm calibration cubes, run one at a time

Taken from https://all3dp.com/2/3d-printer-calibration-cube-the-best-models-how-to-use-them/

Why Are These Tests Poorly Suited to Fusion3 Printers?

Our printers are designed and optimized for printing large parts quickly, out of high-temperature materials such as ABS, ASA, and PC. This design and optimization covers both the design and construction of the printer hardware, AND the slicer profiles we publish.

Issues with Thermal Soak

One side effect of this optimization is that printing small parts on Fusion3 printers can cause a problem that is not commonly found on hobbyist/consumer printers: thermal soak. This is when a print is so small and printed so fast, the layer you just printed does not have time to cool down and solidify before the next layer is printed on top of it. This is often a cumulative or compounding problem: the more layers it goes on for, the worse the problem becomes.

Thermal soak results in edge curling, ugly and blobby misshapen corners, curling or deformed overhangs, and generally misshapen prints. The compounding nature of the problem means a print that just looks a little funny on one layer may look unrecognizable 20 or 30 layers later.

One thing all of the calibration/test prints we mentioned have in common is they are small! This means they all have major problems with thermal soak. This thermal soak issue often makes it impossible to use these prints for their intended purpose (improving your print quality), since any “signal” of changes to make is lost in the “noise” of thermal soak issues. Or worse, you spend time chasing a problem that shows up in your calibration print, that would not actually show up in your real (larger) print.

Fusion3 Printers’ Unique Design

Fusion3 printers work differently than hobbyist printers. Our equipment runs hotter, runs faster, and has an enclosure. So while our equipment is FDM/FFF, as are many hobbyist printers, our approach to energy management in the printed part is dramatically different. This means the approaches, rules of thumb, normal settings, etc. that hobbyist printers/users use are not necessarily correct for our equipment, even if you’re printing the same material (or the same print) on both. And common quality/troubleshooting tests from the hobbyist world don’t work as well. AND, if they do “work,” the results you get and the correct corrective actions to take, may be different than what you’d do in the hobbyist world.

How to Run Common Calibration Prints on Fusion3 Printers

If you want to run these common calibration test prints and have them stand a chance of working well and providing meaningful information, here are some tips:

• Run them in higher temperature materials (ABS, ASA, etc instead of PLA)
• Print two or more of them at once, spaced apart 50-100mm
• Start on the “standard” or “default” quality setting. “High” quality presets don’t always mean your part is going to look better
• Pay attention to how they are oriented on the bed – orient overhangs towards the blower side

How Should I Solve Print Issues Without Calibration Prints?

We understand that without these calibration prints, you may feel a bit lost on how to tune your print settings. Here are some helpful tips for solving print quality issues with your Fusion3 printer:

• For printing temperatures, use our slicer-supplied settings and IGNORE the manufacturer’s settings (on the spool or on their website)
• If you encounter a situation that you think will be solved by printing a temperature tower and adjusting print temperatures, STOP and get in touch with us. 90% odds it’s not the print head temperature causing your problem
• Some print quality guides online are OK. They are good for giving you the direction to look at but don’t blindly apply all their recommendations
  • Check out this link for troubleshooting steps: https://www.simplify3d.com/resources/print-quality-troubleshooting/
• When in doubt, contact our support team and let us help. We know our equipment in and out and have been doing this for a decade. Odds are we have seen something like your situation before

Part of what you pay for with your Fusion3 printer is our expertise and experience to help you get the results you need. Don’t feel like you need to figure out everything by yourself. And in 99% of cases, we’ve already done the work that these calibration tests are designed to help with. At Fusion3, we take pride in providing our customers with high-quality 3D printers to meet every application and integrate seamlessly into your process.

For more information on our 3D printers and how we can address your business 3D printing needs, please Contact us today!

Chances are, if you’re buying a 3D printer for your business, you have a specific challenge, or a specific project, in mind that you want to address using this technology.  And 3D printing is a very powerful, flexible problem-solving tool if it’s used correctly.

One of the biggest sources of headaches for our new customers we see is when they try to jump into a large, complex project with their new Fusion3 printer before they’re fully familiar with the equipment and how to use it.  This creates a lot of frustration, wasted material, and blown up schedules.  Remember: Fusion3 3D printers are complex machine tools, not appliances.  Our products are much more capable than consumer-grade printers; but with that capability comes additional complexity and lower “guardrails”, so to speak.

Our goal with this article is to provide some helpful guidance on how long you should plan to allow for the users of your new Fusion3 3D printer to climb up the learning curve and be ready to tackle your big challenging projects

Level of 3D Printing Experience

The most important factor is how experienced you are with 3D printing in general.  People who are totally new to the technology should plan for a longer learning period than folks who have a background with industrial machines or consumer printers.  And if you have previously had a Fusion3 printer, your learning curve will be even shorter (but still there!)

It’s important to remember that even if you are an expert with other 3D printers, do not assume Fusion3 products will work exactly the same.  Please attend our training classes and read our documentation, and take your time!  The people we see who get in the most trouble come from a consumer/hobbyist 3D printer background, and try to apply exactly the same workflows to our products.  They don’t contact us for help for weeks, by which point they are utterly frustrated and very behind on their projects.  It never hurts to reach out to us early and often, even if you just have questions about something.

Materials You Intend to Use

In general higher-performance materials are fussier to work with and require a greater degree of skill and knowledge in order to get good results.  If your project requires a material like polycarbonate, nylon or fiber-filled varieties of materials, plan for additional time to gain familiarity with these materials.  

In many cases, you can run trial prints in an easier-to-use material such as ABS as a way to gain experience.

General CAD Experience & Designing for 3DP

Number of Users

The more people you have using your 3D printer, the longer it will take to get the whole team up to speed.  

• People absorb information at different rates
• Some people will get more experience than others
• More people = more opportunity for confusion. Who performed a maintenance item… Did someone change the print head out… etc

Our recommendation is you designate one or two people as “power users” who are responsible for using the printer, maintaining the printer, and setting up prints.  These power users are the interface between the rest of your organization and the printer.  Later this requirement can be relaxed if appropriate.

Putting it All Together

So, how long should you plan to spend with your Fusion3 printer before deploying it in your mission critical projects?  It depends on a lot of factors.

AT MINIMUM: Plan for 2 weeks to familiarize yourself with your new printer and its workflows.  This would be for folks who are already experts with 3D printing, have a strong CAD background, and understand how to deploy 3DP in various uses, and a small team.

AT MAXIMUM: Plan for up to 1.5 months.  This would be appropriate for a large team of many users, many different applications for the technology, and a weaker CAD background.

Some other quick notes to keep in mind: 

• All new Fusion3 customers, regardless of skill level, should plan to attend our weekly free training sessions.  Sign up HERE.
• If you have specific materials you need for your projects, order them ahead of time.  We continue to see supply chain disruptions in the filament market, and many specialized materials can be hard to find.

If you have a large project coming up and are planning to use Fusion3’s printers, please factor this learning curve time into your plans to ensure you have sufficient time to come up to speed on the technology and are ready to hit the ground running!

At Fusion3, we pride ourselves on offering the highest quality products and services to our customers. We’re excited to announce an update to our approved materials list. We’ve updated the list, added some new materials, and added some new information to support our multiple product platforms.

You can click here to view our updated materials list.

Materials List Update

We know the importance of having the correct information available at the right time. As Fusion3 continues to develop our services and improve our products, we focus on providing the most updated information to our customers.

We’ve gone through our existing materials list and removed materials that are no longer available due to supply chain issues or stopped production. Materials we think are only temporarily unavailable we have left on the list for preorder possibilities. We’ve also de-certified a handful of materials from a supplier that no longer meets Fusion3’s quality standards.

If you have questions about this decision or would like further details regarding our updated material list, please contact the Fusion3 support team.

New Materials Available

Not only did we remove outdated information from our materials list, but also we improved it with new options. We’re excited to announce some major additions to our approved materials list including:

BASF Ultrafuse 316L

Polypropylene

Additional Polycarbonate Filaments

Materials List Reorganization

With the addition of our new EDGE platform, our material landscape has become more complex. Our updated materials list has some additional information to help you print successfully including:

Print Surface: What surface should be used with this material? Most of our materials use glass, but some new materials for EDGE require special removable/interchangeable print surfaces.
PLEASE NOTE: For EDGE, we’re only listing our “officially recommended” print surface for each material. Many materials are compatible with other surfaces (such as the PEI flexplates) but in the interest of keeping the list legible, we didn’t include this info. Feel free to experiment and see what works for you!

Bed Prep: How should the print surface be prepared? Most materials use gluestick (1, 2, or 3 layers), but for some materials there are acceptable alternatives. Other materials may use a removable surface which has its own rules.

Expertise Required: Previous material lists have included this and we haven’t changed anything here. This info is our attempt to communicate how difficult it is to work with a certain material.

Printer Compatibility: What product platforms is this material officially supported on?

ONE FINAL NOTE: There are two versions of the material list. The “web” version is what’s on our website and has all this info. To increase legibility in the printed version, we’ve omitted some of these columns.

Transparency and Customer Service Are Our Priorities

Our goal is to continue to meet our customers’ changing needs with the most current products and services available. If you have new materials or suppliers you’d like us to add to our approved materials list, please reach out to our support team.

FIRMWARE UPDATE

At Fusion3, we strive to keep our printers running top-notch to meet all your business printing needs. Our goal is to enhance your user experience with our EDGE 3D printers without needing to continually purchase costly hardware to access updated features. One of the ways we do this is with frequent firmware updates.

Our most recent firmware update for the Fusion3 EDGE 3D printer includes updates, bug fixes, and improvements to usability.

All EDGE users should check their systems and install this update if they haven’t done so already.

What Are EDGE Firmware Updates?

Firmware updates for EDGE can contain one or more of the following components:

• Updates to system files that alter the printer’s behavior
• New control board firmware
• Updates to onboard documentation
• Updates to the user interface (F3 web control, DSF)
• Updates to the single board computer that runs the user interface, file management, and network connection(s)

All of these are provided in one easy-to-install .zip file. So no matter what is in a particular update, you install them on your printer the same way every time.

This particular update contains updates to system files, a new control board firmware, and a small update to the user interface. More details about what exactly we’ve changed are below.

INSTALLING THE UPDATE

Download the update file here.

Download the update instructions here.

Follow the instructions to install the update. Please make sure to follow the instructions about updating the clamp plate and the scrub pad positioning.

IMPORTANT NOTE: When you install 1.4stable2, it will show “1.4Stable1” on the Info screen. This is normal!

What Does 1.4t# or 1.4Stable# Mean?

These designations are part of how we number our firmware releases.

A “t” build is a test build. It’s a build we’ve made for internal or limited testing with customers, but isn’t a stable or formally released build. The number after the “t” iterates each time we change something.

A “stable” build is a formal release. The number after it iterates if we change something. For example, there was a mistake in the 1.4Stable1 build so we made 1.4Stable2.

For a given number (ex: 1.4), the “stable” builds are more mature than the “t” builds.

Firmware Changelog:

• Major changes to the nozzle offset probing & calculation logic to improve reliability and customer experience
  • Printer must get 2 offset calculations within 0.05 of each other to exit successfully
    
  • Will retry a full nozzle offset calibration up to 5 times, 7 times total
    
  • Individual nozzle probes & probe probes are retried up to 3 times
    
  • Nozzle is probed, scrubbed, then probed again even if successful both times to ensure good continuity with plate
    
  • (1.4t11) Higher sensitivity setting is used for nozzle probes vs probe probes. This helps in cases of weak or marginal conductivity
    
  • (1.4t12) The probe probe location is offset a few mm from the nozzle probe to avoid any debris that was dropped by the nozzle
    
  • (1.4t12) Added logic to compare the first probe to the value that already exists within nozzleoffset.g. If they are within 0.05mm of each other, it exits without doing the second probe
    
• Changes to intro script for better user experience
  • Added firmware check and auto-update feature at beginning
    
  • Added additional error code for bed leveling for better clarity on machine behavior. Filament monitor custom values are now remembered between power cycles
• Improvements to firmware installation process
  
• Firmware will recognize firmware update files with alternate names on external USB drives, so you no longer have to rename the file before updating
  
• Improvements to stack light error handling and displaying of error states
  
• Stack light is function checked when printer powers up
  
• During the nozzle offset process, the initial datum 0 probe position is now the scrub plate instead of the center of the bed. This results in a more consistent scrub height when the print surface is changed from glass to something thinner or thicker
  
• Improvements to fusionware plugin that reduce processor load. This fixes a performance bug some secure users saw on prints with high polygon counts
  
• (1.4t13) New UI version that shows the firmware version number on the utilities > info page
  
• New control board firmware v 3.4.4
  
• New F3 web control version 3.4.4-F387
  
• New DSF version 3.4.4
  
• Various spelling fixes & minor bug fixes
  

GETTING HELP WITH THE UPDATE

If you encounter issues with applying this update to your EDGE printer, or have questions, please reach out to our support team:

• support@fusion3design.com (preferred)
• 877-452-0010 x2