A review of PP3DP UP plastic prototype 3d Printer

A review of The UP! 3D printer by PP3DP

I have not owned any other 3d printer except this one, but Ill share some personal experiences & tips.
The pp3dp site lists them for US$1500 odd, but you can get them in NZ from 3d printing systems for a much dearer amount. Saying that, you get the local support, which, trust me, you will most certainly need.

The 3d prints are acceptable quality, especially for standard geometric shapes, but when it comes to detailed intricate textures or artistic curves, this style of 3d print technology isnt still quite there.
The UP! printers are perhaps the better ones around, so this is not criticism about the product but more so the technology as a whole in its current state.

If you want small object with intricate detail, for example, high quality star wars figurines, well, forget it.

The printer is very easy to use, & works quite nicely, its fun to watch too!
Its quite intelligent in that it calculates most of the background work needed to get the model stable.
You dont need to muck with too many settings.

The bundled printer driver software is adequate, but not capable of doing anything beyond the standard scale & rotation functions. Some of the settings are not clear, which is annoying because you dont know what a particular function means.

Sadly, there is no real included documentation! But thankfully its not too complex to operate.
I was pointed to links to download docs from the internet, which cover more details.

There is hardly any documentation included, though there isnt much to do to get it going in all fairness.
The otherwise simple assembly instructions are not as intuitive as one might expect.

And if there is a fault, or anything goes wrong, you have to figure it out yourself.
In my case I am very lucky to have a good friend help me out with the support aspect, else I would be very disappointed.

The printer just cant print at .4 with full speed as its nozzle chokes.
This is more frustrating than you would think, becuase it will do it half way through a 3hr print.
No solution was presented to me for this issue, & basically I was told to use slower settings with higher density to stop the printer clogging.
Thats just bad design.

If your print has lots of edges & not many surfaces, & its a small model say 40mm x 40mm x 40mm, you'll be ok printing at 40 micron, but if it has any area where the head goes crazy pumping plastic through, expect it to air print rather soon after its done that.


The printer can accept many different file formats, but you will mostly need to use netfabb or something similar to optomise the models.
Most of the models created will have issues that the printer wont like, & thus wont be printed.
During the sales pitch, everything sounds very rosy, as though youd have a model & it would just print, but that is very much not the case.

You spend more time mucking around with models getting them to print & satisfy the mysterious needs of this device.

Also, the nozzle chokes really really quickly. At least thats been my experience.
I spent more time swearing that actually using the product.

It also doesnt beep or notify you in any manner, if something goes wrong.
In one case, it continued printing for 30 minutes without any plastic feeding in, probably due to what looked like a choked nozzle. Thats just dumb.

The standard recommended models are stereolith .stl files, but when you export models to this format from other native formats, you dont get to keep the original texture. You also loose some types of smoothing.

I used 3d studio max quite extensively, & when I exported to .stl, I lost some of the the smoothing applied on the mesh objects. Not pretty, but it works because you wont notice that on a plastic model of this size anyway.

The biggest bloody mission is getting the model off the base plate & breaking/cutting off all the support material used.
In case youre new to 3d printing, the way it works is that the model is printed lay by layer so each layer has to be stable enough for more plastic to be added to it.
In cases where shapes have plastic protuding out, the printer intelligently calculates & automatically designs supports for those areas, but then you have to take those off.

This is where things get messy, & tricky. If you pull too hard taking off the support material, you risk breaking the model itself, & if you dont pull enough, the material wont come off.
Excesive support material impacts the qualtiy of the print on that particular side, it wont be as smooth.

Also, the system doesnt tolerate any design fallacies, especially open edges or holes.
You see, the printer doesnt understand the concept of a minimum thickness, so everything should essentially be a measured closed surface from all sides.

Any 'facets' open on any object causes it to reject the print command.
Netfabb's repair utility helps, but doesnt cure the issues. You need to go back to the drawing board & fix it all. Sometimes this is to difficult as you need to pretty much re-engineer your model to ensure no object has facets that dont have undefined thickness, or ensure they are all correctly terminated at its ends.

As much as I find all of this exciting & the potential for this technology is amazing, in hind sight I think I rushed into this 3d printer & paid a tad too much for it, without researching the technology limitation properly. I also never actually saw a demo of something complex being printed, & didnt occur to request trying out one of my own models to see all the fuss it would have.

Saying that, this technology is growing & booming, & will improve quickly. And some of the design limitations only help you improve your model so thats the upside to the pain.

Also, any issues with support structure are trivial once you think accurately & rotate the model such that minimum vertical supports are needed to support it.

Do you own a 3d printer? Have you owned a competition makerbot or the like?
What were your thoughts? What do you see as the future of 3d printing?
Please share your opinions.

I will expand more on this review, & write more articles as I get more into it, but for now, this toy is definitely on top of my list.

More posts with specific items & models & videos coming soon!