News RSS

We are incredibly excited to have one of our extruders in a live demonstration at the upcoming Fabtech show in Chicago! The MDPH2 Pellet Head Extruder will be mounted on an ABB Robotics IRB 4600 articulated robot, in partnership with ABB for a presentation of their new RobotStudio 3D Printing PowerPac software. This software allows users to easily upload standard g-code from a conventional slicer and convert it to robot code, then view simulations and modify tool paths in an intuitive and straightforward manner.  Mounting large-format extruders to articulated robots has enabled some of the most revolutionary shifts in possibilities for 3D printing in recent...

Buckminster Fuller, one of the greatest American thinkers of the twentieth century, patented the Fly’s Eye Dome in 1965. He dubbed it an “autonomous dwelling machine” and saw it as an answer to the housing crisis of humanity- a prototype for a home that could be easily manufactured, efficiently transported, and rapidly assembled. This would make it economical, and furthermore, it would be adaptable to the needs of its inhabitants. The structure relies on tension and compression to be self-supporting and can be scaled to any size while maintaining this state of suspension. The entirety is made up of a single...

One of our recent developments in the extrusion testing lab has been a stationary testing unit version of our MDPE10. What we hoped to achieve with this unit was a more rigorous and exhaustive test program that could monitor and log data in real-time under different extrusion conditions. This would in turn give us a more developed understanding of ideal parameters for melt flow and output for any given polymer, thereby optimizing efficiency.  A brief description of how some of these factors play out during extrusion in a screw and barrel system such as on the MDPE10: The barrel is...

We are pleased to announce we’ve partnered with Fumex to provide air filtration systems specifically engineered with extrusion in mind. We are always thinking of ways to make it easier for our customers while working with our machines to stay safe. We believe that VOCs (volatile organic compounds) produced during additive manufacturing have not been adequately studied to date.  We feel that the potential health risks deserve a closer look since there is not enough education provided to small-scale producers and hobbyist 3D printing enthusiasts on this topic. We are working towards creating our own body of independent research into...

One of our particular ambitions at Massive Dimension is to make 3D printing a more sustainable practice. Plastic waste is an enormous problem, and the myriad solutions presented thus far have helped to stem the tides but are just a beginning. Problems of new production aside, there is already a vast enough quantity of plastic present on our planet that creative recycling efforts must be introduced to find useful applications for what we have otherwise deemed garbage with an extremely long shelf-life. We now have clothing made from recycled plastic, plastic aggregate substituted into concrete, and in several countries around...