Josef Prusa’s Team Showcases Automated 3D Printing Farm

The new system is equipped with an automated control and maintenance complex as well as proprietary software and robotic devices for unloading finished products.

It is not the first print farm of Josef Prusa and his team: a huge cluster of 600 3D printers has already been operating at their Prague headquarters. All these machines print components for new 3D printers 24/7.

As Josef says in his blog, the company recently got an offer to represent the Czech Republic at the Expo 2020 in Dubai, but on the condition that his team would show something innovative. And this «something» turned out to be a new generation of automated farms consisting of thirty-four 3D printers controlled by the proprietary software and equipped with a system for collecting finished products.

Interestingly, the systems feature CoreXY kinematics instead of Original Prusa’s. If you wonder whether such printers will be offered for sale separately, the answer is yes, but the new product (it is called Prusa XL) will have a larger build volume and a tool changer that has not yet been implemented in the farm.

Note: Albeit larger than in the printers of the farm, the build area of the Prusa XL is limited to only 36 x 36 x 36 cm. If you need a 3D printer with a really large print area, consider the Raise3D Pro3 Plus with a build volume of 300 x 300 x 605 mm.

For layout convenience, 3D printers in the farm have a different, cubic build area. The entire structure is engineered like a server rack, with the ability to quickly replace printers for scheduled maintenance or repairs. The farm is easily scaled, and in the future it will be possible to use a mixed composition of devices: for example, a dozen 3D printers with tool changer systems plus another fifty simpler devices for printing with one material. Unloading systems for finished products will also be offered in different versions. It is also planned to implement tracking of each item for quality control.

The Prusa Connect software allows monitoring all printing processes and collecting statistics, taking into account the remaining time to complete the current job for each cell. The functionality even includes automatic selection of the most suitable system: as soon as a new task is drawn up, the program determines which 3D printer has recently completed a job and has not yet cooled down so as not to waste extra time for warming up to operating temperature. At the end of the cycle, a robot approaches the 3D printer, removes the bed, and gets it to a special area to separate the product from the surface, after which the bed is installed back into the printer, and a command is given to 3D print the next model.

The farm is compatible with a wide variety of filaments — from polylactide to polycarbonate. So far, this is only a functional prototype, and it is unknown when the farm will be commercially available. Josef complains that the company is still experiencing difficulties in supplying components, so the team will devote the next few months to testing the system.

In the meantime, the prototype can be viewed at the Dubai Expo 2020. The Czech pavilion will remain open until May 31.