hello Engadget expand my name is anneka
zuna's France and I'm the digital
fabrication editor of Make Magazine it
is my great pleasure to announce to you
that we are unveiling today our 2014
ultimate guide to 3d printing last year
we hosted an unprecedented event and
make offices where we tested 15
different 3d printers and this year were
up to 23 different printers so as this
fan is fueled is rapidly expanding and
growing we're looking at all of these
different printers and trying to help
you figure out as a consumer which 3d
printer is right for you so we saw a lot
of different trends this year in 3d
printing from the small and affordable
we had several printers that were under
$1000 this year we had the Printrbot
simple the printer bought plus the mini
castle the Paquito the up mini and the
solidoodle 3 and that's a really
game-changer and having printers that
are below this thousand dollar price
point before that printers were usually
in the $2,000 price range and it was a
bit of a justification to afford just
getting into 3d printing and starting to
tinker and play around with it so we
continued to ask the question you know
which 3d printer is right for you in
this widened changing field we also saw
in addition to these small and
affordable printers that came out that
we had some precise prints with liquid
resin so there were two printers that we
tested the beam on creator and the form
one from form labs that were stereo fog
rafi printers so this was the first time
that we were able to instead of just
using plastic filament to print we're
using liquid resin for very precise
prints with a lot of fine detail um so
things that we also saw that were new
were three armed robots or the delta
bots that came out we only tested one in
our testing for this year however I mean
our wants to watch section we highlight
many others that are coming on the
market we also saw some automatic
adjustments so one of the most difficult
things about getting 3d printers to work
well at least in the consumer market is
having a very level bed and that can be
a challenge for the first-time user and
we saw two printers
the mini caso and the up plus two that
had automatic leveling and adjustment
procedures that made this much easier
for beginners to use and we also saw the
the prosumer or professional consumer
category grow and expand so in addition
to some of these cheaper smaller and
affordable printers we have printers
that are more suitable for architects
and designers and engineers to have on
their desktop at work not necessarily
the tens are hundreds of thousands of
dollars that these printers use the cost
but much more in the two thousand dollar
range so our testing team for this year
we recruited 15 different testers from
all across the country from a wide
variety of backgrounds we had artists we
had designers we had 3d printing
enthusiasts leaders of build groups
teachers makerspace designers and
managers so people from all different
walks of life we also had a few people
that were new to 3d printing and they
gave us some very valuable perspectives
on how to test and wide to test and who
we were testing for so this brings us
again to who we tested for so it's
really about what printer is right for
you and that is tailored by a whole
bunch of different features and
functions so what budget do you have
what type of prints do you want to
create do you want to print large
objects are you very concerned with
surface finish so there's a lot of
different factors that go into what
printers are it for you and we really
wanted to look at the whole variety of
users throughout the maker community so
that can be we looked at mainly three
core groups that would be makers
tinkerers and designers so we look at
makers as a group that is really
interested in having their tools just
perform and the more interested in
simply creating the physical objects
um tinkerers are people that don't mind
messing around with the machine they're
happy to upgrade it themselves they're
happy to manually muck around with it a
bit to get it to work and then we have
designers so people that are much more
people in software and designing objects
themselves then actually perhaps
creating them on these maybe you know
architects or 3d designers whole variety
of fields that are often designing
things on their computer and then
sending these things out to be produced
however now that 3d printers are
becoming easier to use and providing
much better print quality we have this
whole level of designers and
professional consumers there's also a
great interest in 3d printing in
education so schools are starting to
adopt 3d printers so we have a lot of
students using them we have a lot of
educators using them and they're being
used in a lot of maker spaces so with a
whole classroom group of people and so
as they become easier to use it becomes
easier to teach people and groups how to
use them and a whole variety of areas
and then again the prosumer professional
categories where we have people that
instead of waiting months or even years
to send prototypes out to be finished to
come back and then to be able to see if
those models right if it feels right if
it looks right if it's the right scale
in size they can just print it out on
their desk and what used to take months
or even years or weeks can now take a
few hours depending on the the printer
that you have so we've really looked at
this whole variety of different types of
users and we wanted to evaluate printers
based on what would be right for a
specific type of user not every printer
is right for everyone and so based on
budget and other factors that can really
influence what printer you should buy so
how we test it how did we go about
developing a protocol for testing these
printers so we really wanted to look at
kind of from the very beginning from
taking out-of-the-box and last year we
called these our Christmas morning tests
so this year christmas came early in
that we tested for a full week before we
actually implemented our shoot out
weekend where we had our 15 testers come
to the make offices and run our tests
and what we did during this Christmas
morning test is we took each machine out
of the box as they came in we went
through all of the manufacturers
instructions on how
set up and calibrate and do our first
test prints and just like you would on
Christmas morning you know we went
through and we did our test prints just
to make sure that before the shootout
weekend if there were any mechanical
difficulties or we needed to contact
customer support we had time to do that
ahead of time we many of our testers had
extensive 3d printing testing experience
many have multiple printers at home or
they teach in schools or they use it in
their art work or design work but we
really wanted to look at a beginner's
perspective so even though these people
had extensive experience we asked them
to approach it like a beginner to
carefully read through all the
documentation provided to evaluate that
documentation to make sure that it's
clear to make sure that someone coming
in as a beginner could set up this
printer and understand it and if there
were difficulties in that we wanted to
note that and we wanted to make sure
that we were carefully evaluating the
documentation and all of the setup tips
from the very beginning we carefully
collaborated throughout the process so
this wasn't an isolated experience each
of the testers collaborated in teams we
each went through the testing protocol
and we set up the printers we ran a
whole variety of test prints and this
house prints we ran you can see above me
here so we had a secret heart box by the
designer Emmett we had a sculptural
print to kind of test surface finish the
zombie hunter head by Ben English we had
the Goldberg polyhedron which we did for
the resin prints I mean that's up in the
corner that that box with all the little
dots out of it and our torture test this
year to really test how well printers
were calibrated and dialed in from the
very beginning was the spiral light bulb
sculpture um it's a very difficult print
and any printer that could pull this off
in a reasonable way was a real standout
for us we also carefully you know paint
customer support throughout the process
if we were having an issue or we wanted
to make sure that we could get more out
of the Machine we would call them up and
we also wanted to test you know is
customer support responsive are they
responding to users queries quickly you
know many people are doing these as a
weekend project they're printing over
the week
you know dis customer support responds
did they get back to in a timely manner
or will it be weeks before you hear from
them so these were all part of how we
evaluated the different machines for our
testing so the other print that we
tested that wasn't shown on the previous
slide was the maker robot so this
printer can tell you a lot about how
your printer and your software settings
are dialed in so with consumer 3d
printers there are two major sides of it
one you have the mechanical design of
how the printer is put together and then
you have the firmware the software that
the printer runs which is upgradable and
you have the slicing software in some of
these printers you have a choice of
slicing software and you can tweak the
settings and dial it in to your
satisfaction and get dramatically better
prints from dialing it in from some of
the other printers there close source
and your not able to get into the
settings as much or at all so some of
the printers we could tweak and dial in
some you can and you're pretty much set
with what you get out of the box and
this robot test print really showed us a
lot about one how the machine was set up
so you can have you know these concave
and convex surfaces on the top of the
head and in the eyes and you can really
see you know are the belts tightened
well on this printer has it been put
well together mechanically you know how
well this is extruder handle very short
extrusions you know most of the printers
we tested the fused filament fabrication
printers are essentially robotic hot
glue guns you know they're taking in
plastic filament they're heating it up
and they're squeezing it out and drawing
with the filament so if they're
extruding for very short periods some
printers handle that well some printers
don't so the tiny areas on the hands and
the arms are these little circles that
it's continually extruding can tell you
a lot about your printer this Emel in
the chest and then there's a little make
logo on the back as well of this model
sometimes when the printer is moving
around very rapidly you can get
vibration in the nozzle and it can kind
of lead to this echoing or ghosting or
repetition of features throughout and
that can also tell you you know you're
having cannibal issues or that your
slaves and software just isn't
calibrated all that well or that your
firmware is having issues with
acceleration
it's not speeding up or slowing down in
a smooth way you know we have bridging
so we have kind of where the legs come
together in the robot and under the arms
can tell you a lot about your slicing
software and how well that's calibrated
and then we have some smooth surfaces on
the front if your surfaces aren't smooth
vertically you can have mechanical
problems so you could have a lead screw
that perhaps mechanically isn't
off-brand
or not calibrated well or you know you
could have alignment issues so this
print told us a lot and it was the print
that we used for our Christmas morning
test and it was also the print that we
came back to throughout the testing so
without further ado I'd like to announce
our standouts from our testing there's
seven kind of machines and categories
that really impressed us so we tested 23
total and these are seven that we were
thrilled with so best value at you know
399 dollars assembled the Printrbot
simple we feel is a great value and we
have a lot of educational users more
schools more maker spaces or teaching
classes where they need many people to
print it once and ideally you know if
you're spending over $2,000 or $3,000 on
a printer you're really limited to how
many you can have and how many students
can be printing at once you know this is
a really great printer in that it's
cheap you know for the budget of you
know instead of buying just one printer
you could buy several of these and you
could have them running all the time it
produced acceptable prints and you know
for for that price we found it was a
really excellent value next up we have
the best-in-class prosumer fused
filament fabrication so for us this was
the replicator 2 it had exceptional
prints right out of the box you could
print untethered which means that you
don't need to connect to a computer to
print you can print right from an SD
card and it's got a little control panel
that you can use to do that so it's kind
of nice that you don't have to have your
computer attached can just swap your SD
card in and out this was the same
printer that was in our test last year
and there was a standout but it's had
several key upgrades since then
there's an extruder fix that's now
standard its upgraded firmware so now
Prince much faster but still has very
high quality prints I mean it's got a
very large build area so we find that
it's really suitable for engineers and
architects and designers people that
need high quality prints don't
necessarily want to be tied to the
machine we want a machine that performs
well and looks good on the desk
next up in our just hit print class for
people that don't necessarily really
want to tinker with all of the internal
settings with still want high quality
prints that don't necessarily need a
huge build area we have the up plus two
now what's really great about this
printer is the auto level running and
auto calibration features that it has
this is something that as I mentioned
before are really key to getting
beginners printing quickly and printing
well a lot of printers have thumb screws
under the bed that you have to level
manually kind of using a combination of
moving the extruder around and testing
with paper that works well but you know
if your printer if your bed gets a
little level off unleveled then your
prints could not stick and that can be a
source of frustration to beginners so we
found that this printer whether it's
Auto leveling was excellent and had
great print quality but it is closed
source the software is closed and why
you can make adjustments to it it
doesn't necessarily offer all the
flexibility to a tinkerer that some of
the other printers do next up our
surprise hit was the felix 2.0 this
printer really surprised us last year it
performed okay in our testing this year
they made some upgrades that made it
perform very well it printed the surface
finish was beautiful right out of the
box and you know at a price point that's
that slightly less than say the the
MakerBot replicator 2 although not much
so it was really quite impressive the
the surface finish that we got and we
were really surprised by its quality and
we recommend it based on that it's got a
pretty large build area and although you
have to print tethered initially there
are upgrades available to print from an
SD card so you could print without a
computer next up we have the
best-in-class resin printer on so this
year we were very excited to have the
stereo lithography resin printers in our
testing we had the form one in the
benign creator the form one was a
fantastic printer we call it a modern
marvel in the special issue it printed
well immediately basically all the
tweaking is in software there really is
no bed leveling there's no calibration
none of that is required all the truly
required is to orient your model
properly in the software it is quite a
bit expensive than the others at about
3200 dollars it's a good thousand
dollars expensive than the others
however um if you wants very fine
quality prints you know beautiful
surface finish and not really being able
to see the striations that you can see
sometimes in the fused filament
fabrication printers on this printer may
be for you and then next we had best
documentation so one of the difficulties
in getting started with 3d printing is
having good documentation on your slicer
settings the software that's used to
slice models into layers for 3d printing
and lulzbot really took this on they
basically printed a book on you know how
to configure slicer how to dial in their
printer how to use the settings and the
manor was really recommended for anyone
that wants to learn about 3d printing
whether you have a low spot printer or a
different printer it's a it's really
quite excellent and we recommend this
documentation highly and then we have
our best open architecture printer so
the open architecture category is for
printers that are open source they open
source their part files and their
software and you can really get in there
and tinker with it so the Ultimaker has
shown a track record of really being
open having all of their parts out and
really letting you get in there with the
software and kind of tweak and tinker
and being able to modify the printer the
ultime kerttu is a little different than
the previous version they had a laser
cut alta maker which is easy to kind of
expand the the X and the y and the z
axes and take her with that on the
automaker to has a much nicer appearance
to it it's much more professional look
to it might be a little bit harder to
modify but you can still get in there
and tweak all the software settings so
because all the maker has shown this
continual track record of one constantly
improving their software constantly
improving their firmware and having
really beautiful custom software even
though it's open-source cura is really
intuitive it's easy to use and you know
we expect great things from ulta maker
when we've seen a lot in the future so
that is our stand-ups we are very
pleased to announce that the special
issue is now on sale
we'll have copies of it over at our
booth if you put out shortly and we're
very excited about it so anyone that
wants to learn what printers write for
them based on their budget based on
their needs based on their build size
and finish quality all these factors
should really pick up this issue we'll
be able to go through all the different
23 different reviews and figure out
which printer is right for them and we
look forward to doing a lot more reviews
online in the future and we'll be
continuing our coverage of 3d scanners
and other 3d printers shortly thank you