Look out, The 100 – there’s another high-speed, open-source DIY 3D printer in town, and it seems to reach comparable speeds. Meet the LH Stinger.
A recent YouTube video shows the Klipper-based, bed slinger ostensibly operating at 1,000 mm/s. Its creator, Andrei Cristea, who goes by “Lemur Haze” on YouTube and GitHub, is a student of the high-speed printing world, much like The 100’s creator, Matthäus Szturc. But Cristea is more focused on developing a speedy, daily driver machine than earning a spot on the #SpeedBoatRace leaderboard – although that is where he cut his teeth.
“The project was a natural evolution from the research I made while pushing an Ender 3 to print a 3D Benchy in four minutes,” Cristea said, in an interview with All3DP. “During that time, I found many weaknesses in the frame design choices adopted by most commercial bed slingers, and I focused on finding ways to overcome them.”
More than 2,000 input shaping resonance tests and a complete frame re-design later – plus a great amount of support from the Annex Engineering and Klipper communities – and the LH Stinger was born. To function, it relies on fully belted linear rails, an AWD-driven Y axis, a “very” low center of gravity, a cross-frame structure, and a Cartesian motion system. All told, Cristea said, this allows the machine to reach speeds of up to 1,000 mm/s, 100,000 mm/s2 acceleration, and a volumetric flow rate of 55-60 mm3/s. For optimized usage, however, users are looking at speeds of 400-600 mm/s with 20,000 mm/s2 acceleration.
“The most surprising discovery so far has been the precision and motion path quality at extremely high speeds,” Cristea said. “I believe that the nature of the independent X and Y axes of this Cartesian motion system is the reason for this, and I suspect this observation hasn’t been made previously because most of these printers have been running at 60 mm/s until recently.”
A full bill of materials is available on the LH Stinger’s GitHub page, and comes in at around USD $1,000, Cristea says. That’s a fairly high price tag for a DIY machine – nearly triple that of The 100. This is due to the machine’s “genuine, high-quality components” and Cristea’s geographical location, Iceland, where sourcing and purchasing from vendors is often both expensive and time consuming.
The LH Stinger’s modular build is one in which each assembly and sub-assembly can be built separately, and then combined as a final stage. In all, interested users are probably looking at around three-to-four days of work, Cristea said, with the electronics box and wiring being the most arduous.
“But that’s assuming that you can rely on the CAD model for assembly, and that you have previous experience with tasks like changing a board on a printer, squaring a frame, replacing a belt or a pulley, and crimping some wires,” he added.
Looking toward the future, Cristea has big plans for the LH Stinger. While the first release has so far been focused on the printer’s frame and platform, he has “immediate” plans to make the build process more accessible by creating documentation that is more user-friendly. Right now, the only instructions are CAD reference materials – sourcing parts from vendors in various geographical locations, and gathering feedback for build or design issues.
The first step here, Cristea said, is to create documentation that is more user-friendly, as right now the only instructions are CAD reference materials. He is also working with other LH Stinger builders to source and keep track of part suppliers around the world – with special attention paid to part quality and compatibility – to help lower the printer’s cost. Finally, he’s gathering community feedback to optimize build or design issues.
For more details, or to start a build of your own, check out the LH Stinger’s GitHub page. Should you just want to see the printer in action, Cristea’s YouTube channel hosts a wealth of LH Stinger videos.
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License: The text of "This Open-Source Bedslinger Is Claimed To Print at 1,000 mm/s" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.