Dear Jared,
We have to point to some things out about our prices and further explain why we don’t want to have 3D printed tools. I hope that this explanation will be the full answer to all our colleagues, because there are people on this forum that haven’t used our tools and do not know that we also perform data recovery in 90% of our time.
We started developing our tools as we could not buy them because, apart Chinese chopsticks and pieces of paper, there was nothing on the market. Believe me, if someone made a tool of the same functionality, precision, quality, with good documentation and support, we would be the first to buy it.
For example, to point how a research is difficult, we are just working on a tool for HGST Helium drives with 7 platters and we would appreciate it if someone could let us deliver dimensions and computer model of that drive, so we would not had to throw 3000 euros on parts and 80 hours of engineering work on taking measures.
Recently we delivered a greater quantity of tools in one country in Indochina area. The company to which we sold have all the equipment - from clean rooms to the elevator going at a speed of 3 floors per second (for 50 floors). About your claims that the temperature maintaining constant, believe it or not, they turn off their air conditioning systems after 18pm and differences in temperature are up to 30 degrees during the day. Similar, for UV damage, you're right, but we will not risk a tool left on the table in a room where there are no sun-blinds, or if someone forget to close the curtains.
We spent 2 years researching 3D printers, and two different models -
ProJet® 3510 HD and
3510 HD ProJet® Max.
The price of each unit is about 90,000 euros, there were major problems in communication because we've waited 4 months to get the email from them (which probably includes the possibility of the existence of the cartel), the print itself is very expensive, even if we do not include depreciation of devices, we would still get 30 % -50 % cheaper tool. This gives the calculations that we would not be able to repay the devices only through the tools.
In addition, the main material for printing is very expensive, and it is necessary to combine with additional support material that remains on the tool in a layer of 2/10 of a millimeter. This would require manually removing the supporting material from the printed tool which raises the question of precision and repeatability, but also the speed rate of development the tools.
Photo: 3D printed tool after 20 minutes of cleaning the supporting material (white parts and particles) which is used to fill the gaps during the printing
It is possible to make from 1 to 5 tools this way, but it is impossible to organize production, particularly given the problem with the creation of plastic axle, as well as tools for the control functionality (photo below).
Photo: Supporting tool, used to test a ramp tool
For 8 years we are working to deliver the most accurate and physically durable tools for data recovery and we are always open to suggestions and recommendations for improvements of the product, but there are things and technologies that we have explored and that would jeopardize the quality of our product .
