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Text: James Woodcock
Kentstrapper, a Florence manufacturer building industrial 3D printers since 2011, places the Mille at the top of its professional range, a large-format FFF system with a 1000 by 1000 by 1000 mm build volume. It sells from around 40,000 euros and each unit is assembled individually in Florence.
The pitch is single-piece production. Mille targets shops that currently build large parts from several bonded or fastened segments and would rather print them whole. Kentstrapper shows the machine producing non-separable structural components in one piece at sizes around 700 by 500 by 500 mm, printed in engineering polymers rather than joined from sections. Printing a part whole removes structural seams and the crack sites that come with them.
The Mille uses the company's Goliath high-flow extruder and an actively heated chamber and bed, which lets it run demanding technical polymers such as ASA-CF and PPS-CF for functional industrial parts. A one-cubic-meter build volume is not new in industrial extrusion, so the number is an entry ticket to the large-format class rather than a headline on its own. The real draw is a made-in-Italy machine, supported directly by the manufacturer, covering the professional range up to a full cubic meter and aimed at automotive, marine, aerospace and heavy-engineering tooling.
