I already have a small farm of Bambu printers, including H-series machines. What I want to add is a machine that gives me more room to work with engineering materials: PA, PPA, PPS and PC, in both filled and unfilled forms.
The appeal is being able to choose a material for the part I want to make. Sometimes I want the stiffness and dimensional stability of a fibre-filled polymer; sometimes I want the toughness of an unfilled one. A hotter, more controlled build environment should give me more options, particularly as parts get larger.
That led me towards industrial printers, and eventually the Stratasys F123 platform.
A lot of the machine I wanted was already there
The F170 caught my attention because of what surrounds the printhead. It has an insulated oven, a substantial gantry and a folding thermal shield separating the hot build chamber from the mechanism above it. Those are significant things to design and build from scratch.
I've built CNC machines before, including machines using AC servos, so the idea of replacing controls and adapting hardware is part of the attraction. Starting with an F170 means I can spend that effort on the conversion while making use of the engineering already in the machine.
The Vision Miner 22 IDEX has been a useful reference for the sort of capability I'm interested in. My hope is to get useful performance in that direction at a much lower cost, using a second-hand Stratasys as the starting point.
Opening it up
My intention is to replace the proprietary controls and extrusion system, add a heated bed, and use ordinary slicers and freely chosen materials. I'd like the finished machine to be something I can understand, configure and maintain myself.
There's plenty to work out before that becomes a printer. For now, the F123 platform looks like a very promising collection of the expensive mechanical and thermal parts of one.