Studio Kite's CADzilla Prints Gigantic Objects with a Custom Four-Motor Delta-Style Arm
With a build volume measured in the feet, CADzilla is huge — and offers vastly reduced cost compared to other manufacturing methods.
While one part of the 3D printer market is chasing ever-more-compact desktop designs, the other is going in the opposite direction — and you can't get much further away from the desktop than Studio Kite's gigantic CADzilla.
Designed to print sculptures and props for the art and entertainment industry, CADzilla measures 24 feet tall and offers an overall build volume of 2.4x2.4x3.6m (around 7.9x7.9x11.8'). Full-scale human sculptures, furniture, and other large-scale objects can be printed in a single run — and come with the benefit, missing from other production methods, of recyclability once they've served their often-temporary purposes.
CADzilla is a custom design, following the failure of a customised off-the-shelf robot arm. "A KUKA 125 robot arm was retrofitted with an extruder and trials began," the company tells 3D printing news outlet Fabbaloo. "After extensive tests and projects, the KUKA proved to be too slow with a loss of accuracy due to bounce. It was also dangerous.
"It became apparent that an original approach was needed. The outcome was to utilize a 4 motor Delta style parallel robot. This was an industry first on this scale. The engineering calculations proved it would be the only way to achieve high acceleration rates efficiently. The 4 motors design proved that if a motor malfunctioned, the other 3 motors would not let it move. Also, the lightweight design meant that powerful high torque motors were not needed. Potential injuries to an operator were mitigated by using a delta design. The 4 columns also allow for an improved print area."
The finished machine offers a 500mm-per-second extrusion rate, layer heights as low as 0.2mm, boasts a heated and fully-enclosed print chamber to prevent warping, an activated carbon filtration system for safety, and a custom operating system — all of which combine, Studio Kite claims, to allow it to produce large-scale props for around a tenth the material cost and a quarter the labour costs of its rivals with a lower environmental impact.
More details are available on Fabbaloo, while Studio Kite's website has a dedicated CADzilla page.