From: Info (info@m2-systems.com)
Date: Mon Dec 08 2003 - 15:20:24 EET
Dear Al,
The envisiontec material costs $225.00 per Kg. That seems to be par for the industry. Being an Envisiontec Perfactory mini user, I would like to clarify the fact that supports make up less than 5% of the total mass used. Many times I can get away with designing a casting gate/sprue that also acts as a support. While in magics, we have been able to make support structures with a contact area as small as .25mm x .25mm. The whole idea is to keep the supports to a minimum. I've never had a part where the supports exceeded 15% of the total mass used.
Comparing the material to the price of silver is ridiculous. Why not com pair it to the price of other RP materials from companies like Somos or even the Solidscape material. I would imagine that your confusion comes due to the fact that the Solidscape/SDI machines build at close to a 1:1 ratio of build and support. That does not take into account the amount of material lost in the milling phase of the build process. At $345.00 per Kg for build material and $345.00 per Kg for support material, the SDI/Solidscape machine would take close to 2 pounds of material for the same "1 pound" part, and that would end up costing the customer close to 3 times that the Envisiontec machine would cost.
As I said earlier, if you compair apples to apples, the Envisiontec machine is quite economical to run. Please let me know when you find an RP machine that builds in silver so that I can start to cut my material costs.
Thanks,
John Mastoloni
M2 Systems
Tel: 860-832-9331
Fax:832-9361
www.m2-systems.com
----- Original message ---------------------------------------->
From: <ChathamRes@aol.com>
To: <rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi>
Received: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 11:18:56 EST
Subject: Material Cost for the Invision
We received an email showing how cheap it is to own an Invision System. What it did not say is that the price for a one pound model (with one pound of support) is $199. Compare this to the price of silver which is $88 per pound. Not quite as cheap as you would first think.
REL
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