Best commercial grade 3D Printer in New Zealand

Some of you may have noted I'm very much into 3D modelling, 3D Animation, CAD, etc. Its been my hobby for years since I was a teenage kid.

3D Printing is the next logical step to 3D design so I've owned many 3d printers over the years, mainly filament based, called FDM / FFF type.

It all started when desktop 3d printing started to get more popular, from the Makerbot days.

Back then 3D Printing was in its infancy, in New Zealand in particular as a smaller country we had no local players.
Of course times have changed now.

The 3D Printers I have owned & used extremely thoroughly:

Makerbot Replicator

UP Plus (Afinia)

Wanhao i3

FlashForge Adventurer

FlashForge Creator 3 Pro Independant Dual Head

Creatbot F430

And some I have owned but very quickly moved on from:

Dremel

Anet A8

Tevo Tarantula

Creality CR10

FlashForge Inventor

If you don't want to read the full article but just want to know my current personal favourite 3d printer, its the Creatbot F430 3D Printer. However this is a very serious 'Toy'.
I class it as a semi-industrial & rather commercial machine.

Sometimes if I want to print a simpler part, particularly with dual colour or in multi material or with soluble support, then I prefer this FlashForge Creator 3 Pro which I feel is the best Desktop grade Professional 3d printer that is cheaper. 

I can sing praises on these machine all day long. The F430 in particular is everything I wanted in a 3d printer.

I was a little concerned about buying such an expensive machine at first because there were not many reviews for it.
But now I understand that the target market for these machines isn't hobbyists buying $500 Ender 3 & posting youtube videos.
This is serious shit, designed for people who want to make money from 3d printing, or save lots of money with 3d printing, a business user or serious designer - like me haha. 

Initially I bought it because it was big as I wanted to experiment with 3d Printing some speaker enclosures.
Most of you will see my long history of obsession with speakers, & designing speakers finally got boring enough that I started to dabble on enclose design.

I've got a lot to share on that front as well, but that's another post as I get time.

The idea of printing exotic filaments was very interesting because PEEK has resonance characterists similar to wood.

But when I heard the price of PEEK I shat my pants - quite frankly I didn't think I would be able to afford PEEK & all those fancy plastic names they were touting, but I thought well, may as well future proof yourself right.

One day PEEK will be cheap enough to 3d print speaker enclosures & I'll be all set for it!

The local company was prepared to give me a free course on how to 3d print all that hightech stuff as well so I thought to myself at least I know they're not bullshitting me when they say it will 3d print any filament currently available including peek.

At first I though if its 'FREE it probably isn't & I'll be listening to a sales pitch with more products thrown at me.

Turns out the chap who runs the business actually knows a thing or 2 about 3d printers. So I actually really enjoyed the training session & we hit on a lot of interesting topics, pretty technical fellow, not your average suit wearing sales idiot.

Check out their 3D Printer Store NZ website where I got it from.

I got given a really thorough run down on the free Creatware program that comes with the machine. Granted it looks like a hack out of an older version of Cura so nothing spectacular, but regardless it was good to understand the nitty gritty of how to use the numbers to get the result you want.
Then once you get it it doesn't really matter what program you use.

The machine is built like a bloody tank. I mean shit it weighs so much I said to the guy how the hell will I get it back out of the car. Luckily my neighbour is also quite intrigued with 3d printing etc so he was all to keen to help & excited to see it work.

This machine has automatic bed levelling - trust me when you have a glass bed that big, its never going to be perfect. You can level all you want, but somewhere, something is going to be off.

The machine compensates for this quite nicely. Nothing spectacular, but hey, I was happy that one headache around constantly worrying about levelling was finally over.

My first print straight after I took the beast home was a 6 hour long platform jack. It came out perfect.
I then jumped right into Carbon Fiber Nylon because I've always loved the matted look of carbon & how 3d prints look less 3d printed with the layers when you use CF.

The machine has 2 heads & really easy to change nozzle sizes.

So I bumped on a 0.8mm nozzle that pours a shit load of material out, making some nice chunky carbon reinforced parts.

Man they are STRONG.

All in all I'm really happy with the Creatbot F430 3D Printer & I highly recommend it to anyone particularly in New Zealand.
I bought mine here from 3D Printing Services (also called 3D Printer Store now a days) based in Auckland & get the free training - I highly recommend them.

The owner is really passionate about helping people & actually took a keen interest in the speaker enclosures I wanted to develop.

He even sliced one of the stl files for me with his recommended settings & gave me lots of ready settings for different materials & nozzles & what not - really you could see that passion for 3d printing was there.

Great folks to work with.

And man the amount of different filaments they have in stock is insane.
I was blown away by what they stock right here in little New Zealand & the amount of support they offer on how to 3d print each & every one of those materials!

Of course no 3D printer is perfect though.

Like a month later, the levelling probe stopped working. And the stupid thing is that without this probe working the whole unit becomes useless. Can't home & can't start print jobs.

I didn't realise this 1 Z axi levelling probe was the master of all rings. I expected end stop switches for all axi so when it stopped like this I was worried.

I phoned 3d printing services & like a minute later I have a new probe being sent my way.

Turns out the probes are magnetic solenoid driven or something so if you print a lot of long hot prints in winter with the heated chamber turned on like I do then the probes demagnetise.

No fuss though, the next day the probe was here & it was 5 mins to change it.

The head part was a bit fiddly. Stupid cover on the back of the head, what a dumb design.
But anyway it was easy fix & all back to printing again.

Been a few months now & this new probe has not given me any grief.

I've put at least 2 larger enclosure prints of 60 hrs each using their PLA Filament & they came out amazing. Check out their 3kg rolls those are perfect for these big prints.

I'm now saving up to start on that same big enclosure with their PETG & other Carbon Fiber filaments to see how the harmonics sounds.

I particularly love their Nylon CF & really want to try make a speaker with it but bloody hell those rolls are $85 per KG. Thats basically $85 for EACH speaker.

That a bit rich to be honest, but the materials are bloody amazing quality.
The CF parts I printed parts look as good as machined parts - they don't look 3d printed at all. And you pay for that!

Anyway I felt I'll share my favorite 3d printer now that I have owned it for enough time to have an informed opinion.

Luckily 3D Printing Services actually carry it in stock.
I also phoned another company in NZ who had listed it as in stock but turns out they Drop Ship from China haha & there is a so called order delay - whatever.. and they even charge like a thousand dollars more than 3D Printing service up in Auckland.

I was a bit apprehensive at first because it is the most expensive 3d printer I have ever bought, but worth every dollar.

This F430 really is the bomb - I couldn't find anything in NZ or even Australia that comes close to it!

If you want the Best 3D Printer in New Zealand - hands down the Creatbot F430 from 3D Printer Store is my recommendation.

3D Scanning Intro with Kinect & Skanect

Starting out in 3D scanning using Kinect

In this post we talk a bit about our entry into the 3D scanning world, & why I ultimately settled on MANctl's Skanect 1.5 as the choice.

A quick intro to 3D scanning:

You need a 3D scanner such as Asus Xtion or Microsoft Kinect scanner (both the Windows or XBox versions are fine)

Ideally, you want a PC with built in graphics that comes with OpenCL drivers, but that is not compulsary.

Thre are 2 ways most programs go about it, they either rely on your CPU, or on your GPU.

For CPU based scanning, I hihgly recommend a grunty quad core with atleast 4 GB of RAM & Win 7 - trust me you'll need ram for this. I use 8GB & the performance is very good.

For GPU, you'll need OpenCl set up. Back in the day, OpenGL was the thing to look for, now OpenCL seems to be it. But again, you dont need it. Another reason why I chose Skanect, & not Reconstruct Me.

Top contenders & Free tools

ReconstructMe, Skanect & KinectFusion project seem to be the hype but a new free product the FARO Scenect is getting a lot of attention.
FARO's free version is quite hard to use in my opinion, & in my case it failed to actually start despite following instruction carefully. It insisted it couldnt find my XBOX kinect, despite Skanect finding it ok & the correct set of drivers installed.

Why I chose Skanect:

If you dont want the long & short of it, heres why.

3d photo printing with lithopane stereolithography

How to print 3d photos from plastic

The main idea:

3d printers let you create anything out of plastic, once you have a 3d model for it.
Any photos have bright & dark edges in it. So the idea is to scan that photo & create thicker vs thinner regions of plastic, such that whern printed & light is passed through them, the photo stands out. Once you get the settings right, the results can be pretty cool.

Stuff like this is available on sites like trademe, for example look over here for some practical stuff you can buy.

What you need:

- 3d printer (I use an AM based up! plus 3d printer you can buy from 3d printing systems here)
- White plastic (preferably bright white, colours arent really suited for this stuff)
- Photo2PMesh software

And how the bloody hell do you make it look as good as it should:

Well, not to worry, thats what this post is about.

We cover 2 main areas here., photo 2 mesh software settings, & UP 3d printer quality settings

Please be aware that within reason, each photo will be better with certain specific settings for best effect & what I recommend is not the best for every single photo. but more so a good basic 'default' setting that will do a very good job of most photos you throw at it.

Photo to mesh software settings:

The most important settings are Z height & Mesh height.
My recomendations:
Z Height:                    1.5
Mesh Height:              2.5

Up printer quality settings:

The most important thing is to ensure your orientation is set such that the photo is printed vertically on its thin side edge NOT flat straight, else it will fail.

My recommendations:
Resolution: 0.25 (250 micron)
Fill:            Least density
Speed:       Normal

3d printing prices - shapeways vs ponoko vs iMaterialise vs sculpteo

Comparing the price to 3d print a tiny 20mm x 14xmm x17mm model

Just a quick post as a heads up for those that want to know which service is overall the cheapest.
I havnt tried any of them, just researched it so giving you the info without you having to sign up & upload models, & check out & go through all that jazz, & then get rubbish emails for the rest of your lives potentially.. kidding.

All shipping costs are to New Zealand. Currency is mostly USD, unless otherwise specified.

I do my own platic 3d printing so Im mostly interested in metals or other materials, more specifically shiny glossy silvery looking ones.


www.shapeways.com - $12 for a tiny gold coloured glossy metal part, sounds a lot but its the cheapest service provider overall & even has the option of pure silver, not bad.
The white plastic version was only $2.5
Shipping $20, but its practically flat no matter how many small items I added to checkout, weird, but well, it prboably has the brains to check weight etc

www.ponoko.com - cant make small stuff from metal!

http://i.materialise.com/ - no login necessary yay! - but 12.5 freakin Euros for white plastic are you kidding me?! They also provide pure gold but coudlnt price it on the spot, interesting if you wanted something made to that standard.

www.sculpteo.com - $8 for white plastic - shipping costs $30!


Thats it folks.

Any of you out there tried these services?
Is the cheapest of them, shapeways good enough, or is iMaterialise something out of this world??

Happy Shopping :)

3d Print Raftless with PP3dP Up! printer

How to print raftless reliably with a pp3dp up printer

Contrary to what you have mostly been told by the user manual, your local sales person, or other experts, it is my experience that the up! & up! plus printers are capable of printing raftless to an acceptable standard once they are tuned correctly, with the correct settings used.

In this post Ill attempt to justify why raftless is worthwhile & asnwer some of the common issues caused during raftless printing that put people off it permanently.

 

Benefits of raftless 3d printing:

 

Raftless saves time & material

Youre not printing an unnecesary piece of plastic.

No Raft means less support material sticking to the largest surface

Less supports sticking out means a cleaner post-print finish, & thats a big plus when printing without the raft

Tuning your UP for raftless

3M painters tape

Kapton (captain) tape

 

Some recommended settings & model design consideration during print

TinkerCad vs 3dTin vs Gogle SketchUp

TinkerCad vs 3dTin vs Google SketchUp from a 3d printing perspective

Though I have used TinkerCad the most among the 3 & perhaps havnt used the other 2 enough to truly know their capabilities, Ill share an opinion as more of a beginner.

Summary:

If you want really easy & are new to modelling, TinkerCad has hit the nail on the head with being the simplest product of them all.
Straight forward & intuitive, you know what you are doing. A newbie will love the convenience & natural approach of the UI. The models genuinely are easy to print with fdm 3d printers.

If you want ease, but acept that TinkerCADs lack of any real toolset except for the 1 hole utility is starting to hold you down, then 3d Tin is definitely a good balance.
The problem with 3d tin is that it creates very poor textures, especially when you use a curved surface on a custom created shape.

Google sketchup is very useful if you want to use dimensions & create a very geometric item.
It allows you to make additions by drawing faces, which is quite useful when you want to create little cahnnels on extrusions in an already created object.
Its not fundamentally designed to create water tight models automatically so expect lots of open faces & unclosed walls, or holes, which you might need to check with netfab.

Im not going to hold that against sketchup though, because every modelling tool is designed with a certain approach, 3d printing just isnt SketchUp's approach. They work at the 'face level' on the mesh, & that is a fundamentally different way of modelling than the other 2 compared here.
It doesnt work too well with FDM 3d printers if there are any unclosed edges, but if you follow good model creation discipline, sketchup is ok.
But I did find sketchup to be quite frustrating at times, & also quite slow for complex designs.

Tips for the Up 3d printing software

Tips to make UP! 3d printer software deliver

As per my previous post on the UP! 3d printer, getting things to work correctly is finicky.

It loves to break, or complain about your model.

In this post, Ill share the solutions to problems I faced:

1) The model looks hollow, but prints solid.

Check if you can do a repair in netfabb. The basic Netfabb version is free, if you dont have it, download it from this netfabb download link. You dont need to fill out personal info, its optional.

You might find that netfabb in its wisdom decides to completely close the faces as part of the repair, which isnt what you wanted, but this will get you a step closer to what you actually want.

Here, you can use a simple 3d program like TinkerCad to assist. IMport the stl into TinkerCAD, Clone the appropriate shape from the part that you want to make hollow, & then do a hole out of that in TinkerCad.

For example, if you want a tube running through the middle but the model file doesnt have a closed face at the hole opening edge, your print will fail. In that case, the netfabb repair will close that tunnel opening hole. Then you import that closed model, clone it, extend its length & do a hole cut in tinkercad.

Its easier than it sounds :)

If you have a professional program, obviously they all have their own respective tools for difference cutting.

2) Error: Part material not enough, Add material?

This one is a pain. It poses a question & yet does nothing after you click yes.

It doesnt withdraw the plastic or extrude any, it just stops printing & does nothing.

I read some of the threads on pp3dp support forum that suggested clicking to add a new spool & estimating the material. That seems to have done the trick.

3) Model has issues that cause it to not print properly, or fail the print due to support errors

Do a automated repair in netfabb, frankly, it rarely fixes the problem. What it does do though is let you see the triangle mesh & clean up any unnecessary complexities in the model.
After that, export the model as a .stl file from netfabb or other such program & import that stl file into TinkerCad.

Despite my disappointments with some aspects of TinkerCad as stated in my previous tinkercad post, its quite handy to get tinkerCads import mechanism to automatically fix the issues in that stl.
You see, tinkercad is designed for 3d printing so all models are automatically 'solidified'.

This works well as long as your model doesnt have any more than 100000 mesh triangle faces. Some models will. In which case, see if you can fix holes from netfabb & do some simple repairs in netfabb, often that reduces the number of faces just enough to get the model to import in tinkercad.

If you still have too many faces, download the free meshlab tool & perform a face cout reduction there. Do a google search on it, pretty easy to do.

After youve got it in tinkercad, simply do an export from it. Go to the Download your model to print option & it will give it back to you in stl format. Easy :)

4) The raft keeps on lifting, which is partly due to the head not being close enough to the platform.

This one is most annoying of them all. The printer is very delicate, despite what marketing you might read.
The whole platform & head assembly constantly move, & are attached on a central vertical arm.
This arm has to follow laws of physics, the longest unsupported end toward you is obviously going to droop, or it will be over-compensated, causing drooping in the back or vice versa.

I have to keep re-aligning this printer so often! I wouldnt call this 'robust' by any measure.
Im told this might be because I always use the printer at the fastest speed settings, but hey, it didnt say that when I bought it. Im using it under its designed operating specs, so as a consumer, I expect it to work & hold on.

5) The head assembly goes a tad loose & starts shaking every couple of prints!

This is perhaps the biggest engineering screw up of this device. Why on earth would you use just 1 screw to mount a large heavy moving object thats exposed to extensive inertia??!!

I mean, you dont need to be a rocket scientist to know that 2 screws will be just right.

The excuse is that 1 screw allows tolerance should there be a nozzle collision with items on the perf board, but that is not a fair argument as you can have 2 screws across the same plane mounted on the same yet tad longer piece which will also allow the same amount of head tolerance in the vertical axis.

I was offered a updated metal mount though which seems better as it fits the rails & I look forward to trying it, but I wont be using it extensively because that metal has no tolerance what so ever. Its either riid or flaky, they have to find a compromise.
Tightening the bottom screw helps, but come on, the thing is moving as fast asn an inkjet printers head! That screw aint gonna hold hard is it?? & if u tighten it way too hard, youll risk damaging the screw threads, so be careful :s

TinkerCad - Usable, but not great

Tinker Cad Free Version

TinkerCAD is perhaps the most popular free 3d modelling software around.
Its web based, & thats perhaps the main advantage.
Its not free as in open source style, its just 'free' enough for you to get into it.
There is a free trial, & a pro version.

This free version makes all your work publicly visible. This isnt too bad, just dont name the file something useful if you dont want people actively looking at it. Thankfully all rights stay with the creator so thats good.

Its all hunky dory when you are dropping some of the ready made shapes around & manipulating or exporting them into .stl files for you to 3d print, but you try to get creative with it & TinkerCad will tolerate you for a while but ultimately shit itself.

Its very slow once the design goes past the basics. No its not my hardware, my Radeon HD 6630 happily manipulated & rendered 3ds Max files.
Tinkercad literally re-renders the whole scene in front of you, every single basic shape, & thats where it often has a minor crash.

Here is what these crashes & model corruptions look like:

In terms of modelling functions, frankly, there arent any.

The only thing you can do to the ready made objects besides the simple resizing/rotating/moving is to use them like dye's to cut other objects. They refer to these as holes.

In 3d speak its basically cutting the mesh of the parent object by the intersecting area of the child object that youve positioned as overlap. Thats the entire philosophy of modelling in the free version.
I cant comment on the paid version, if it improves I dont know.

I was making a very simple design, purely geometric, but it had some curves in it.
Now if you have a rectangle, & god forbid you want to curve it a little so its a bit like a banana, then youre pretty much screwed. I got around with by using predefined shapes & then cutting them out.
There is no smoothing filter, or any mesh modifier. No way to join adjascent faces, or cut them.

Its basically 3d for people who have never touched a 3d program before.

For this target audience who are focused on using the 3d printer & making simple stuff rather than precision models, tinkercad is more than adequate, especially being a free product.

Using it is like writing with pencil, except your'e not writing with the lead, you're just scratching lead  randomly & then using the eraser to actually write in what you want!

After a few of these 'holes' are cut, the whole thing starts getting corrupted & the model looks like all the parts you ever used suddenly got dumped there.
Its extremely frustrating as it starts breaking things & changing shapes that you didn't modify.

The examples make it look all awesome, sexy & powerful. Its not.
If geometric right angles shapes is what you want, yup all good, try to add some elegance, tough luck.
The built-in cylindrical & spherical objects are fine, but its creating your own curved objects thats the problem.

Now as you can imagine, the internal complexities of the model which are just nothing but multiple model cross sections being activated or hidden etc impose such constraints that the model becomes un-editable with slow performance.

You try to make any change, or even rotate the view & it will error & crash.

Also, for some stupid reason, any change automatically leads to a save, which is silly, as that takes too long, & even a simple undo will take forever.

And the undo function doesnt even work sometimes when the model starts to get more detailed.

You can actually see it quickly recreate every single object youve dropped or cut in the model before it re-renders the view for you, & thats after every little change. Its nasty.

My design is almost complete, but I cant add the last few details, as it keeps on crashing!

An error shows up asking you to contact support, & thats just as annoying because it happens after every single click.

Thankfully, their support emailed me back promptly, so thats a good start.

Lets hope they get the issue investigated & resolved soon, which will be a good judge of their capability.
My speculation is that this wont be fixed too soon given the nature of how its related to their root design philosophy, usually you cant change those things that quickly.

Yesterday I got an email from them saying they have noted the issue but dont have a fix for it yet. Good on them for replying back, but as expected, no surprises there with not having a fix.

I will work on this & finish my model, & then, stay away from it for creations that require extensive manipulation of their basic steps.

TinkerCad is handy for cleaning up stl models which have holes etc

Youll often be in a situation where something you made looks fine to the eye but the 3d printing software will mourn about it not being a complete solid model etc.

Since tinkercad was designed for 3d printing as the target audience, it lets you import stl files & will automatically clean them us & 'solidify' them, within reason.

You can then export those stl files back out & your printer program will mostly accept them!

This is brilliant, & is perhaps worth sticking around with tinkercad for such simple manipulation.

Have a read of my UP! printer software tips here for details

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!