3D Printers and Printing

This Time Lapse Thursday print came in as a request from our friends over at PrintedSolid. They knew of an Afiniac who was printing some amazing models, and wanted us to get in on it. Well to that we say… Challenge Accepted! We downloaded the Angry Tentacle Guy, originally created by chaitanyak and reproduced by Afiniac, JuliaDee. Knowing that this model had successfully been printed on an Afinia H-Series, we weren’t the least bit concerned. We ran the model at a standard setting, lo and behold it turned out great! There are still a few adjustments that could be made to produce a finer resolution, but we wanted to try [Read more…]

Welcome to Time Lapse Thursday! For today’s print, we chose a design that was created and is used by one of our fellow 3D Printing enthusiasts. This print is called “Cute Octopus Says Hello.” We wanted to print this octopus for any of you that are still on the fence about purchasing a 3D Printer. If you are looking to purchase these are some things to consider: initial investment, filament type & cost, warranty options and, most importantly, customer service and support. Another consideration is the print resolution. We printed this octopus using the ‘fine’ setting, which created a very smooth look and feel. Awww… Go ahead, you can say [Read more…]

Welcome to Time Lapse Thursday! For today’s print we’ve chosen a sculpture of Recursive Spheres created by SteedMaker. This print was designed to be a stand-alone sculpture that is an abstract representation of a lighthouse. Although we didn’t add a light for our time lapse, we completely see the appeal of illuminating this sculpture. SteedMaker shows some really great pictures demonstrating how this print can brighten any room. We printed our file at: Z Layer Resolution : 0.20mm Fill: Loose Material: ABS Quality: Normal With Raft Size: 63.70 x 65.56 x 3.00 mm Give this print a try and let us know how it brightened your day! Until next week, [Read more…]

Students get an edge with 3D printer packages designed for Next Generation Science Standards Afinia teams with Pitsco to offer affordable 3D printing education Rapid prototyping is all the rage as 3D printers pop up in companies and schools everywhere, but teaching about it has been a go-it-alone journey. Until now. 3D printing, which creates three-dimensional objects by laying down successive layers of material, is becoming widespread in engineering and manufacturing for rapid prototyping and production. Considering this, giving students an opportunity to understand the technology is important for the future of industry. So Afinia, a supplier of desktop 3D printers, teamed with Pitsco Education, a provider of STEM learning [Read more…]

Welcome back to Time Lapse Thursday! This week we have a few people at the Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo, we wanted to print something that will appeal to the inner nerd in all of us, as well as give our team a little something to chat about while at the conference. So for today’s print we chose the mascot for the newest release of Android – Kit Kat created by p0Pe. To all our Android and Google fans out there – How SWEET is this? We printed our file at Z Layer Resolution : 0.15mm Fill: Loose Material: ABS Quality: Fine With Raft Size: 81.00 x 120.25 x [Read more…]

Dr. Chris Williams, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering in the Department of Engineering Education. Dr. Williams also directs the DREAMSLab at Virginia Tech (Design, Research and Education for additive manufacturing Systems), which contains eight different 3D printers representing five different 3D printing technologies. A strong proponent of additive manufacturing and 3D printing, Dr. Williams was interested in developing a way for K-12 STEM teachers to bring the technology to their schools. As part of its outreach program, the DREAMSLab holds 3D printing workshops for K-12 STEM teachers at the National Science Foundation (NSF) center for e-design’s Research Experience for Teachers (RET). During the week-long [Read more…]

Erin Wincek: A Librarian’s 3D Printing Journey Erin Wincek has one foot planted in the library’s tradition of community service, and the other in high-tech. What makes her especially interesting is how she blends the two and her resulting impact on her region. My journey began when I was listening to NPR. I was in the car with my kids and a story came on about 3D printing. I had never heard of such a thing. Time literally stopped and I was transfixed by the possibilities. From then on, I read anything I could find about the subject and talked to anyone who would listen. I still had not seen [Read more…]

Welcome to another edition of Time Lapse Thursday! This week we decided to have a little fun with what we printed. We chose to print some things that all ages would smile at, and yet are still functional. We printed some Zookins – Animal Napkin Rings created by gwygonik. Feel free to use these for your every day dinner setting, or a cute little surprise for your kids at dinner. They also double real nice as distractions on your desk during those long conference calls. Any way you choose to use them, they are cute, durable, and certainly a conversation piece! We printed our files at Z Layer Resolution : [Read more…]

Happy Time Lapse Thursday! This week, we’re going a little throwback – to a time when Geeks ruled the social atmosphere (and world). A long time ago, in a galaxy far away… This week, we printed something that all Star Wars fans should be able to recognize, a TIE Interceptor. This fictional spacecraft first made its appearance on the silver screen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. We thought it was only fitting to post this print during Geek Week on Youtube. Our print was printed in sections and assembled to make it whole. The body was designed by DavidHanwell and the stand by henriksson19. It’s important to [Read more…]

Happy Time Lapse Thursday! This week we’re highlighting the H-Series’s new capability for pausing the print and swapping out the filament. We chose to print a Knot Vortex designed by SteedMaker, and printed it on glass. This object was printed with a normal quality setting and the printer still turns out this amazingly detailed object. The whole print took about 9 hours to complete printing, and this is including the time for the 2 filament swaps. It turned out to be a nice piece that everyone here at the office comments on when they walk past. Our file was printed at: Z Layer Resolution : 0.20mm Fill: Loose Material: ABS [Read more…]

Welcome to Time Lapse Thursday! This week we wanted to print something that would showcase the H-series ability to print finer detail. This video is one of five designs by pmoews that are not only beautiful objects that can sit on your desk, but they can function to organize your work area. Go ahead and spruce up your office with these interesting pencil holders… Happy Printing! [Read more…]

Happy Time Lapse Thursday! This week we wanted to print something that would be a little difficult to print, but still interesting and has that WOW factor. You may have seen this before, but we chose to print a Ball in a Cage the Twists the design is created by stevemedwin. We decided to shake things up a bit and print it on a glass piece. The glass was prepped with a solution that helps the filament stick to the plate, and set to dry for a few minutes. Then off we went… Our file was printed at: Z Layer Resolution: 0.15mm Fill: Loose Material: ABS Quality: Fine With Raft [Read more…]

Welcome to our new weekly video series – Time Lapse Thursday! For our first video we thought we’d start out with something quick and fun to print. we found a Jigsaw Cube design created by TheSeend, and we realized it was a great place to start. The set up was quite easy, and It only took a few hours to print. I recommend this print for anyone that might be new to 3D printing, it’s a great file to try different printing techniques. Check out the video here: Time Lapse Thursday – JigSawCube Print Details Z Layer Resolution: 0.15mm Fill: Big Hole Material: ABS Quality: Fast No Raft Final Print [Read more…]

Many thanks to Rich Brown of CNET for doing this review. Here’s a summary: The good: The Afinia H-Series 3D Printer (H479) strikes the right balance between ease of use and configurability. It also gets you printing faster than any other 3D printer we’ve tested so far. The bad: The H479 has a smaller build platform than its competitors, some elements of its software are confusing, and your objects will need some post-print TLC to look their best. The bottom line: No 3D printer is perfect yet, but the Afinia H-Series H479 3D printer is the most approachable model we’ve reviewed, and we’d recommend it to anyone serious about getting [Read more…]

Dr. Phil Metzger, Ph.D. is the Lead Research Physicist and founder of NASA’s Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations (GMRO) Lab, which is part of the Surface Systems Swamp Works (gotta love it). Here’s Phil’s explanation of what the GMRO does: “The GMRO Lab develops technologies primarily related to regolith – that is, excavation, conveyance, in and out of chemical processors, manufacturing and construction with regolith, site preparation, landing pad construction, prediction of rocket exhaust blast effects, etc.” It is the GMRO’s work that will make lunar 3D printing possible. Here’s Phil’s mind-expanding take on the motivation, challenges and possibilities. “The cost of a lunar mission is directly proportional to the [Read more…]

Your printer is by far the best on the market, hurry up and work with up! to get larger volume. [Read more…]

The Afinia looks more like the sum of the engineering process behind it than does the Form 1 — more industrial, less polished. By the time we had found Afinia the crowds were in full flow, so getting to speak to anyone proved impossible however we did get to take a look at the machines (essentially a re-badged Up!) and some of the parts. Afinia was also riding the wave of a prize win from Make: Magazine in the form of the ‘Best Overall Experience’ in the Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing. If the crowds on the stand are anything to go by this little FDM-style machine has legs. The [Read more…]

Steve Norris of www.NorrisLabs.com loves to make ‘Bots, so much so that he produces one every two months, photographs and writes about them in his blog. (Editor’s Note: Steve has about 20 of them detailed on his site.). As a Contributing Editor at Robot Magazine, he is continually challenging the status quo to create things that have never been seen before. As an example, one need go no farther than the hilarious RoboStool, the name of which, Steve quickly points out, is quite funny in its own right. So, where did the idea come from? I’m not really sure, but one day while waiting for my wife to finish shopping [Read more…]

I have used a couple of other 3D printers. Involved in some kickstarter projects as well for others. This one is the first 3D printer that has ‘just worked’ (almost see below) and I highly recommend it. I have printed in the 5 weeks I’ve had it an amazing amount of ABS. With the holiday season many folks received an ‘I made this’ gift. The problems I’ve had. 1) SD card had to be removed, reformated before it would actually work. 2) ABS printing doesn’t seem to ‘stick’ as well as I would like. I wonder if a bit more heat on the bed would be good. The greatest thing [Read more…]

This was a Christmas present for my husband, but it has been a lot of fun for both of us. The quality of the prints is very good, definitely good enough for small things and sturdy enough to give most things to our toddler. I’m glad we waiting a couple years for the technology to mature, but this printer is pretty user friendly. The setup for the printer once we received it was pretty simple. The only things that needed tweaking from shipping were the platform leveling, and entering the values from the included calibration print file after we printed it. So far most of what we’ve done is print [Read more…]

So far, I’m very pleased with the unit. It worked as I expected it would. Easy to use and good print quality. The software is better than expected. I like the way it builds its own base below the actual print. My 10 year old daughter imported a cat into sketchup. We exported it into an STL, using a free plugin and it printed perfectly, without any tweaking. I’m looking forward to using it for more serious jobs. Reviewed by: Kai Kaletsch from Saskatoon, Canada. on 1/13/2013 [Read more…]