Hobbyking has released the Turnigy Fabrikator 3D Printer in all their warehouses today. Some people have been eagerly waiting for what they come up with, but now we know. I ordered mine, together with a role of fillament and looking forward to receive it. It will be my first adventure with 3D printers, so I am pretty excited to start printing my own aircraft- and quadcopter parts.
No longer is 3D printing technology the exclusive realm of hard-core technophiles and industrial designers, it is now accessible to anybody with a computer and the ability to put flat pack furniture together. Whether you are into planes, multi-rotors, cars, boats, helicopters, robotics, trains or even anime figurines the Fabrikator will soon become your most versatile tool. Can’t find that rare part for your old model or you just want to modify an existing piece? Now you can print what you want, when you want it
Features:
• Ball bearing liner rods
• Rolled lead-screw with anti-backlash drive
• Phenolic heat stabilized bed W/removable Glass print area
• Heated print bed
• NEMA 23 and 17 motors
• 4 rod supported print plate for high speed printing
• 6 sided full printer support for high accuracy
• SD card cable free printing|
• PLA and ABS filament compatible
• Top feed anti-bind spool feed
• Twin print cooling fans
• 2A Heat sync stepper drivers with active cooling
• 220~110V A/C compatible
• Homing and Limit switches
• Full LCD GUI with on the fly tuning
• Large 150x150x100mm print area
• Dual bearing supported twin belt Y axis drive
• Heavy Duty 12Volt 29Amp Power supply
• Open Source control Architecture and support
• Full Parts support and future expandability platform
Specifications:
Overall size: 360x400x600mm
Print size: 150x150x100mm
Nozzle diameter: 0.4mm
Filament diameter: 1.75mm
Print speed: up to 300mm/sec
Print platform: Phenolic heat stabilized bed with removable glass print platform
Filament type: ABS and PLA
More information and (get it from your favorite or local warehouse) through the links below:
United Kingdom warehouse (UK Plug)
United States (East - US Plug)
United States (West - US Plug)
Seems that the 3D printer is not (yet?)available from the Australian warehouse.
Comments
I received my 3D printer last Monday and have spent building the printer. It took about 7 hours for me to complete it, but my 11 y/o daugher insisted that she wanted to help building and that had a negative impact on the time needed.
Tonight I will fire it up for the first time.
I must say that the printer came very well packed. The big box that was delivered contained a very extensive manual and several smaller boxes, named Box A - Box G (?). Inside those boxes I found large pieces of foam keeping the parts save from any damage that could have occurred during transport.
I must applaud HobbyKing (Turnigy?) here. Smaller items, like screws and other mounting materials were each seperately packed in little bags and marked with an item number to which the manual refers.
If all goes well tonight I hope to have my first 3D printed object... really looking forward to it.
To be continued...
I think you guys have unrealistic expectations. Everything needs tweaking and experience to get right.
I run a CNC and IT requires a lot of tweaking to get perfect parts! There's always something you can change to get better results. With a little experience you can get "good enough" parts almost every time on the first try, but if you have tight tolerances or need it to be perfect it's almost always going to require more than one try, and some tweaking.
I'm still torn on 3D printing. Mostly my reason in my head keep telling:
1) ABS & PLA printers need constant tweaking - which consumes you and the whole process of making something. I could probably just use a dremel tool on some materials and get the job done in an hour.
2)SLA/DLP printing then gets my attention and I think this is my solution - but then I see the price of curable resin, see that the resin trays need replacing every couple of months and they are not cheap too.
If an SLA/DLP printer was available to me now at the price of the Turnigy printer, and resin was $20 per litre, and fresh trays were available at the dollar store; then I'd buy one right now.
I think SLA/DLP will eventually be the one that everyone uses in their homes, but it's going to take a while for that to happen.
Gary,
Very well-said. I couldn't agree more. In saying that, I think something like this wouldn't disappoint completely, and may print some useful parts. I really believe it depends on the manufacturer to educate properly, and good education will lead to successful prints, on almost any machine. I am definitely one who believes you get what you pay for, and a poorly built machine with little documentation and education could lead one to believe 3D printing is not for them, when an extra $500 may have made the experience much more enjoyable.
Hi Tyler, I expected my toy comment would elicit some dissent, I think the key word is most.
I should have emphasized that a bit more.
There are a lot of really inexpensive printers similar to this one and at the very least, they are fussy to learn how to operate successfully, especially if you are looking for structural grade replicatable parts.
The high end machines generally are built to more rigid standards and feature a well tested work flow.
But the reality is most of these smaller ones are frustratingly inadequate and hard to tune for reliable results.
I have a very capable DIY CNC machine and my parts cost alone was way higher than for most of the low (and intermediate level) 3D printers.
Best regards,
Gary
This is not bad for the money. I am very experienced in FFF technology and work for a large 3D printer manufacturer. It may not give you results you are looking for, but it will print ABS and provide useful 3D printed parts. It does have a small build envelope, but again, it is under $500. There are a few other options out there with slightly bigger build envelopes, but if you are able to assemble and tune this thing, you should have the skills needed to expand this printer. I would be careful of any RAMPS controlled machine, and would probably swap out the board for something a little more robust. Definitely something I won't be buying, but that is because I have higher expectations. For someone new, at a pretty low investment, this may not be a bad choice to introduce you to 3D printing.
I really enjoy the simplicity of DLP/SLA printing, and use it for jewelry and prototypes of smaller objects, but for useful parts that need to function and have some strength, they just don't cut it.
Filament-based printers are far from toys if you get the correct model and use them correctly. For example, our printers can use over 40 materials, print in polycarbonate and nylon, as well as use soluble support material for complex parts and inner geometry. A polycarbonate quadcopter is very strong and rigid, can withstand crashes, and can even be used on dual extruders to 3D print vibration dampening polyurethane parts right into the polycarb in one print. This eliminates extra hardware and lowers the part count. This is something that is nearly impossible with traditional manufacturing. Far from toys if used correctly and if using a good printer. Obviously with a good printer comes a larger price tag.
Really nice results John,
Your comments reinforce my belief that most of the 3D filament printers live somewhere between tool and toy with a fairly strong emphasis on toy.
Nice timing for this post.
Before jumping in heavily and investing, I got a cheap Robo3D kickstarter filament printer as a test. But it never performed to my needs. Sure you can get decent results if you do many test prints and tweak, and sure a Prusa etc. are much better. But still it is very hard to get repeatability. I need it to be a tool for rapid prototyping so that I can focus on designing parts, and just press print within reasonable limits of course. But at the moment it seem 3D filament printing is more like a challenge to see who has the patience to do the most tweaking and get the best tower print.
So I then decided to try the other route with SLA printing, and got the LittleRP.
Received it early this week and did my first ever test print today. And...ohhmysweetbabyjesusareyoufrigginkiddingme!
This is my first ever print. No tweaking or fiddling, just came out like that. No warping, layer separation, or any of the common problems associated with filament. So if you can live with the limited print area, I would highly recommend looking at the new generation of cheaper SLA printers.
Easily a standard smart lcd and I would not be surprise it's a RAMPS board.
Glenn, I bought the same printer as you. I also had the printed piece that holds the hot end deform. I made a replacement out of two pieces of circuit board material, now it works great.
The other problem I had was that the end stop holder doesn't fit right on the z axis without hitting the coupler from the motor.
It took some screwing around with, but I've printed lots of things successfully!
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