07-01-2017: BlackBelt has completed its successful Kickstarter campaign, creating a trend for conveyor belt 3D printers
The 3D printer stood out for its innovative use of a conveyor belt moving in the Y axis
On July 1, 2017, the Kickstarter campaign promoting BlackBelt – an innovative 3D printer based on a conveyor belt has ended. In fact it was just a formality, because the campaign goal was achieved a month earlier – just 15 minutes after it started! Ultimately, the company behind project – BlackBelt 3D BV, raised a total of €101,970 – more than twice the requested amount. Soon, BlackBelt had a number of followers to its solution – including Creality3D.
The 3D printer stood out for its innovative use of a conveyor belt moving in the Y axis, which allowed for theoretically “infinitely long” 3D prints. To achieve this, BlackBelt printed at an angle (45° by default, but also 15°, 25° and 35°), which on the one hand opened up the possibility of creating geometry unavailable to traditional FDM/FFF 3Dprinters, but on the other hand generated a number of other problems (the biggest of which was resulting lower adhesion of layers on the XY surface).
BlackBelt offered a build area of 340 x 340 x "infinity" mm and could produce an unlimited number of parts in a single cycle, making it a kind of production line in the form of a single 3D printer. It was based on high-quality components, including a specially designed extruder, feeding system, a metal frame made of BOSCH aluminum profiles and steel elements.
After the 3D printers were manufactured and sent to backers from Kickstarter, the project fell into some sort of oblivion, as its creators moved on to other projects (e.g. PodoPrinter). Ultimately, OMD3D, the largest reseller of Blackbelt 3D printers based in Belgium, made an arrangement with the other parties to take over the Blackbelt 3D project. As of now, OMD3D makes and sells Blackbelt 3D printers.
Thanks to BlckBelt’s success, a number of alternative belt 3D printers have emerged, including Printrbelt, PowerBelt 3D, the open source TigTag, the White Knight, and most notably, Creality’s CR30 / 3DPrintMill.
Source: www.kickstarter.com