It was the summer of 2021 and we received a text message from a potential customer, it said "Can you build a 4x8ft 3D Printer in 12 weeks? With pellet and filament extrusion? We need one for a Guinness World record." Immediately, we all thought someone was pulling a prank on us. Maybe one of our competitors were simply joking with us? It is a small industry, after all. Wow, were we all wrong.
Fast forward a week, and we were taking on the largest build of FI. Utilizing a high-speed belt system for linear motion, reinforced aluminum extrusions, and the Pulsar and Typhoon extrusion systems from Dyze Design, and we were in the build of our lives. Our lead engineer, Riley Beenders, was only budgeted two weeks to design all the core components so we could start the fabrication process. From there, part orders were submitted to our vendors with a guaranteed four week delivery time to our shop, giving us a remaining six weeks for assembly and fine tuning. It was one heck of a twelve weeks.
Behold, the KRAKEN was born. We pushed the Duet 2 Ecosystem to it's limits (trust us, we max'd everything out). At the time, Duet 3 would have been a better choice due to the large motors we were running, but we had to work with the technology that existed in the summer of 2021. Long story short, did we do it? Yes. The KRAKEN was delivered to Atomic Props & Effects at the end of the twelve week period and Filament Innovations was one of two printer manufacturers they used to build the statue. Kind of cool knowing you helped someone get into the Guinness World Record book!
The system was eventually upgraded to Duet 3 once Atomic Props & Effects completed all the 3D Printing and Duet 3 matured.
Information on the record can be found here.