What happens when customers ask us to make parts that are bigger than our printers are? We do it anyway.  There are some advantages in breaking up big parts into smaller pieces and joining them together, you may be surprised to know the main advantages are often speed and cost.

Take the below example of this 1/3rd scale International truck:

This part was about 200 hours of printing, if printed in one piece that is a long lead time! breaking it up onto 3 printers for example and running them 20 hours per day the print time is only about 3 1/2 days.  Also if one print has an issue it is not a big deal, but if after 190 hours a big single print has an issue that is a big problem.  Breaking the print up also means segments can be printed in the most advantageous orientations giving better quality and reducing print time further.

By the way this is a fully working truck made for Complete Site Works, pretty cool!

Yes we did actually print this:

Hope you found this post interesting.

Andrew Palmer
Director, Palmer Design & Manufacturing Ltd