I recently purchased a Fabrikator Mini 3D Printer. It was $179 when I bought it and $192 with shipping. The specs looked perfect for a small 3D printer that I could travel with. There are many times I'm traveling for work and have a difficult time getting my Filament Friday video out for my YouTube Channel. 

This 3D printer is small and only has an 80mm square print area but that works well for many small prints. Plus a print can be broken into smaller pieces and glued together.
 

For $179 I was shocked that it came fully assembled. Most low cost printers come as a kit and I didn't want a kit. It took a little assembly which was minor, such as connecting the Bowden tube for the filament and hooking up some cables, but that's standard with any printer.

My first prints went really well. They supplied a small amount of black PLA filament and it was just a little short of the plastic required to print the Chess Pawn from my book "Beginner's Guide to 3D Printing". The next steps are to test print with ABS plastic.

My first impressions are, this is a great printer. Especially for such a low cost. In fact, I'm getting better prints from it than I get from my Da Vinci 1.0's which cost a lot more. Stay tuned to here and my YouTube Channel for future updates on this 3D printer.

I reached a point in my 3D printing experience where I couldn't put up with the limitations of the Da Vinci printers from XYZprinting. They are so busy trying to prevent people from using other third party filaments that they are now affecting customers who are already buying filament cartridges from XYZprinting. I have never used a resetter and prior to last month had never re-flashed a printer to open source Repetier firmware. It all came to a head when I got a message on my Da Vinci 1.0 that I was using an illegal cartridge (which it was not!) and the software shut down my machine. I had had enough. I reflashed my Da Vinci 1.0A that I bought on EBAY used, and have been printing with open source Repetier control ever since. And I love it.

XYZprinting, which promoted my channel on their Facebook page didn't like it and quit promoting me. After one full year of videos promoting their product and helping many of their customers get their machines working, they dropped me like a lead balloon. 

I figured that was coming though but I was already upset with their lack of customer support and the way they kept releasing new printers but doing next to nothing to help those that bought prior or releasing new filaments. Plus even the filaments they released required a $100 updated extruder to print PLA (which they falsely advertised it could do). I made the mistake of updating my firmware as they recommended as that let them into my machine to control when they decided it should be shut down. Never again.

My plan now is to shop for a true open source printer and possibly re-flash my other two Da Vinci's or sell them. Re-flashing is easy because they use the Arduino bootloader. The firmware can be flashed as long as you can get a version for the Da Vinci and the open source community released that long ago.

What is really interesting to me is that the XYZprinting company is using a bootloader in the 1.0 and 1.0A that is compatible with the open source Arduino IDE. It implies they are using  open source GPL code in a closed source product they sell. Seems a bit illegal to me but I'm no lawyer. It does give us Da Vinci owners a way out of the closed source control they have tried to place on us so they failed in their attempt to control us. Having said that, I would not buy a newer Da Vinci Jr or any of their future printers based on this and their existing practices of thinking they licensed you the printer rather than selling it to you to own.

So going forward, I cannot recommend their products and am looking for a more open source company to work with me and my YouTube Channel. If there is any open source 3D printing company that wants to work with me, please contact me at my contact page.

For my channel subscribers, it's just gonna get better and better as I expand what I do at my channel, so stay tuned for more.

I've been so busy with my YouTube Channel that I've completely neglected this blog. My fascination has been the evolution of the low cost 3D printer. The Da Vinci Jr is now released at $349 and I'll soon have one for 30 days to evaluate. Also Printrbot Play at $399 is now released. The M3D is another Kickstarter success that is now shipping. At $349 its another low cost option.

In all three printers you are mainly looking at printing PLA on a small platform. The M3D claims to print ABS and Nylon as well but without a heated bed that makes me wonder. If that's true, its a great value at $349. 

All three feature a smaller print area. Jr is the largest at just under 6"x6"x6". Simple is slightly over 4"x4"x5" and M3D is basically 4"x4"x4". I have a couple Da Vinci 1.0's that print effectively 7.5" x 7.5" x 7.5" and there are many times I need all that space. But there are enough times where a smaller bed would work fine. 

I mainly print with ABS plastic but recently started using PLA. I've found more choices in plastic with PLA but I like the results with ABS better. It's more flexible, more resistant to temperature, and easily smoothed out or repaired with a little Acetone.

These low cost 3D printers are making "a 3D printer in every home"  more of a reality everyday. I know there are other printers in this low price category in the works as well. So it is still early in the 3D printer evolution and I'm having a lot of fun being part of it.

My latest book "Beginner's Guide to 3D Printing" just launched on Kickstarter.
It's a new direction for me so I'm not sure if it will be well received or not. I need the support of Kickstarter to get that first batch of books printed for distribution and determine how much interest there is in this type of book.

The book takes a reader through the various low cost home 3D Printers and then selects the Da Vinci 1.0. From there the reader is shown how to get that first print going. Then how to create their own with Tinkercad. Then how to get a professional print from Shapeways. Tips and Tricks to make the Da Vinci 1.0 printer even better. It's all in this book. So if you know someone or even yourself that is looking to get into 3D printing and don't know where to start, my book tries to help you through it all.

So please pass it on to your friends, relatives, etc. that the book is released and please help make it a success so more people can learn to have fun 3D printing products an having fun.

The people at Printrbot recently announced a new low cost printer. It's called the Printrbot Play. It's targeted at $399 but if history is any indication, that price will rise as all Printrbot 3D printers do. This is an interesting entry though because the sub $500 3D printer seemed like the low point. Now sub $400 seems to be the new line. The new Da Vinci Jr. at $349 seems to be the new low point for a fully assembled ready to user 3D printer.

The Play is all metal construction but a rather small build area at 100x100x130mm. The Da Vinci Jr at 150x150x150mm is larger. The Play has an aluminum print bed so it doesn't appear to offer a heated bed so I'm not sure if it will only print PLA like the Printrbot Simple, there other low cost metal 3D printer. The Da Vinci Jr. will print PLA only. The Play looks to maintain an open source software control while the Da Vinci Jr. is closed source.

It's clear that 3D Printers are getting both better and cheaper. And kits seem to be fading away with more companies offering fully assembled printers. I like the direction things are going. This gets us closer to a 3D printer in every house. Then the fun can really begin.

Thanks to a subscriber at my YouTube Channel, I now have a version of Simplify3D to evaluate. This is an expensive software package ($150) to control a 3D printer. It doesn't design the print, just slices it and send the generated G-Code to the printer. Its the only 3rd party software that works with the Da Vinci 1.0 3D printer stock software.

I want to see if it gives me better quality prints and if it allows me to do things I cannot do with the stock Da Vinci software. Simplify3D gives you far more control of the print. You can set the heat of the print at different layers. You can slow down or speed up the print at different times. You can change the fill at different points in the print. The biggest advantage is you can control where supports for added or removed for sections of the print that may hang over and fall if not supported.

I'm just getting started with the software so it will take me time to learn it. There is a lot to learn. I hope to do some videos on the software in the future so if you are interested in that, stay tuned to my YouTube Channel. I also like the fact that it will work with many different printers. This allows me to jump to a different printer in the future if I need to and not have to learn new software. That is a nice feature.

I had a little bit of free time after the Thanksgiving Holiday so I created a few 3D printer projects. One was an Advent Calendar Christmas Tree. This took all the space my Davinic 3D printer could support and took two print runs to finish it.

The blocks slide out and can be flipped so the number is hidden. Everyday you take one number and flip it until only #1 is left and that is Christmas Eve. The design was done in Tinkercad and the full build is shown on my YouTube Channel and in the video below.

I did it as a count-down to 1 but you can reverse the blocks and make it show the calendar day so place the #1 in the bottom and the #24 at the top. The blocks slide out easily and can be pushed from the back. At some point I could print one of these and put LEDs on the blocks so a Microcontroller can do the count-down automatically.

All the files are open source on Tinkercad and the .stl's are available at Thingiverse.

I've returned as a columnist for Nuts & Volts Magazine. My column titled "Getting Started with 3D Printing" started today in the December issue of Nuts and Volts Magazine. I wrote the "Getting Started with PICs" column from 2006 thru 2009 and it ended for reasons beyond my control but I'm happy to be back. 

The idea behind the column is to help anybody just getting started with 3D printing with tips and tricks that I've learned or will soon learn as I get deeper into 3D printing myself. There is so much to learn beyond downloading a thingiverse file and printing it. And with the various low cost printers available, I thought the timing was right to help others get started.

If you are a regular reader of this blog though, you know I've been writing about my 3D printer adventures for some time. But the N&V column is written for the electronics hobbyist who wants to design that custom case or special mount for their electronic project. There is so much 3D printing can offer and I feel like it's just getting started. Reminds me of the early days of the PC. I think we are still waiting for that killer app or killer print that will make everybody want a 3D printer the same way Visicalc did for the early PCs.

I've also added some new videos to my YouTube Channel that weren't posted here. I'm trying to separate this blog and the YouTube Channel a bit because I still want to help those who still are looking for my help with their electronics hobby. If you are a subscriber to N&V then check out the column. If not, maybe find it on the newsstand and see if it something you'd like to read. I hope to keep that column running for a long time.

I recently bought a CLOUDBIT kit from littleBits and it's expected to arrive in a few days. What interested me the most is the application they advertise for a doorbell switch that will send you a text message when the switch is pressed. The idea is to indicate someone is at your door even if you aren't home at the time.

I found this idea interesting because there are so many projects where I'd like to receive a text message indicating something timed out or a process completed. That way I don't have to sit and monitor it or check back often. One such process is 3D prints. When a print is done I'd like to receive a text message letting me know.

I've read about multiple different modules that allow you to connect to the internet but I found most of them very confusing. That was until I found littleBits. The module has a linux computer on-board so this is more than just a little plug and play module, it's a very complicated module that reduces the internet access down to a high/low signal.

The module relies on an internet service called IFTTT which stands for If That Then This. I've visited the site and it appears to be some kind of scripting language setup that allows you to easily create actions based on various inputs and outputs all connected through the internet. I hope to understand it a lot better when I get the CLOUDBIT running on my Davinci 3D printer so stay tuned if you have any interest in this type of project.

In the Make Magazine November 2012 issue, they ran a 3D print competition with many of the existing available 3D printers. They ran a test print that had some unique features. It had an unsupported arch, round and hex holes, posts and a box with walls of different thickness. Then each printer created it at default settings.

I decided to try the same print on my Davinci 3D printer and the results were great. I printed with and without supports so the arch failed in the non-support but everything else was fine. It's still not clear to me if support would have been permitted or not. I produced a YouTube video showing the steps and the results.

The .STL file is available on Thingiverse for anybody to try. I printed it at different levels or 0.2 layer and 0.4 layer. The default on my XYZware is 0.4 layer, 10% fill and standard shell and standard speed. The support was low fill. Both the 0.2 and 0.4 looked great.

It's true that the Davinci had two years of development over the printers in the magazine, since it wasn't released until two years later, but a sub $500 printer wasn't available back then either. So I'm once again sold on the quality of this Davinci printer.