Mini Fabrikator 3D Printer By Tiny Boy

[Balu]

I'm running it at 210°C - which is hotter than the 190°C the manual said, but it's what the shop said about the Makerbot filament. I'm happy with the first result and I'm trying a longer 4h print now.

I noticed that the steppers still got hotter than I'd like on a longer run like this, so I lowered the voltages to 0.4 V for X and Z and 0.5 V for Y, because Y lost some steps at the end of the travel with lower voltage. I might still have to tweak that a bit.

Of course I will have to calibrate it quite a bit. But I'm not sure what to look for yet, so I'm going through your video soon . There's another collection of things that's supposed to help with fine calibration, but I didn't bring my caliper to check it. Printing stuff is fun even with an uncalibrated printer ;-)

 

[markyoe]

How is it printing now?

 

[Balu]

It's printing nice. I can't use all the advertised 8x8x8 cm though. In Y direction I and a lot of others have problems after about 74mm. I might be able to fix it by giving more power to the Y stepper motor, but since it's the only one that has no cooling fan (yet?), I didn't want to overdrive it.

I didn't have one problem with jammed filament so far. Others reported more problems. It might have been a good idea to invest a little more and get the expensive Makerbot filament - even though it was more of a "everything else is gone" buy.

Today I added two small strips of 12 V white LEDs to the Y gantry so I can watch a print through the camera of my Raspberry Pi when I'm not in the office. I've also decided to replace the front panel and add a window. It's designed, I have a sheet of similar colored acrylic, but the laser on campus isn't available till monday.



I still need to invest more time into calibrating it (first layer get's too wide, holes don't have the right size?) and perhaps upgrade Marlin. But for that it'd help to have the sources of the installed firmware version for it's default settings. Also it's more fun to just print stuff .

Somehow I really like the size, especially because I was able to take it with me on my weekend trips back home to my dad. It was interesting to show him what you can do at home now... But I wouldn't mind a faster and bigger printer either.


Oh and a few days ago I had to solve my first "real world problem" by designing a part myself: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1084593

 

[Balu]

Looks like Hobbyking decided to take it out of the shop already. You can only get spare parts anymore...

 

[Corbarrad]

Looks like Hobbyking decided to take it out of the shop already. You can only get spare parts anymore...

Apparently there's a version2 on the way. A little bigger, a little more advanced, a little more expensive...

http://www.tinyboy.net/ seem to have some sort of crowd funding effort going.
Edit: The project has been fully funded, it seems. Regular delivery is supposed to start June 2016.

I wonder if HK will sell those as well and if they'll stock more than half a dozen in europe this time...

 

[Balu]

Oh, I guess I didn't post this here, but just on rcgroups. I'm not sure why I expected something else from HK, but I guess that's just how it works in that business...

I still like the printer and that HK made it possible for me to get it as cheap as it was, but ...

I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen.

HK pretty much screwed the TinyBoy's original design team. After the design got open sourced, HK notified them that they are going to use it to build their own product. Since they had chosen to use the CC-BY-SA license, HK could just do that. They "borrowed" one of the original machines for "research", but never gave it back. HK also invited them to do the short Youtube clip and said that they were going to promote, extend and support the TinyBoy community - which didn't happen.

But when they started selling their version, they started without mentioning (the "by" part of the license) the source project. And since they cheaped out on some parts (no roller bearings, cloned electronics and hot end, etc.) they are selling it cheaper than what the TinyBoy crew pays just for the parts for their printers.

I've been told that the Tiny Boy crew did get nothing in return, even though HK marketing made it look like they were working together. Since the HKCOTA is a registered non-profit that resulted in the tax office questioning them. They asked HK to clarify that issue, but didn't get a reply.

HK did not open their modifications (like the higher frame, different electronics, firmware, etc) as they are required to do (the "share alike" part of the license) and seem to think that the TinyBoy crew can handle the support questions that come in from all over the world now.

Long story short. The Tiny Boy team is discussing to change the license for the next version to a CC-SA-NC and force commercial users to license it from the HKCOTA so they have more control over it. They've also founded a company to do mass production themselves.

 

[jhitesma]

Sadly sounds about right for hobbyking

I admit I took advantage of a few deals on their big holiday sale...but given the prices I paid...I can't see that they made much if any money off what I bought.

Was really tempted to pickup a micro Naze32/DSMX brushed board from them...but may go with banggood instead where I don't have to pay shipping. (even though they're the same boards and have the same ethical issues behind them...)

Meh...I may just skip the micro brushed quad all together and do a micro brushless...or be smart and keep saving my pennies so I can get a 3D printer of my own