Back on the 3D-Printed Horse

Several months ago, I finally got my hands on a mostly-working 3d printer. A maker bot. After irritated months of tinkering, I had trouble getting it to print out things that I wanted it to, and I gave up. Well, I took it somewhere, and when I got back I just never got it back out of the box. Last week I pulled it back out.

I decided to start anew giving it the benefit-of-the-doubt and try to genuinely get it to print the way I wanted to. Part of that was calibrating it correctly, part of it was connecting it to a computer that was a little more powerful than the little netbook that was running it before.

I can’t say that the prints are perfect, but it’s amazing what a little effort and dedication can do. After printing a whole bunch of calibration prints:

Calibration boxes and cubes

I finally got the thing set to a point where I think I can be proud of it. I printed a couple of things for fun:

Space Invader

Invader Ship

This stands as the beginning of my printing round two. I look forward to seeing what I can accomplish with this little piece of machinery.

January 10, 2011 aeiche Hobby , Technology 4 Comments
4 comments

  1. dude, time to make some frickin legos – i mean – plastic building blocks and start selling them out of the back of a van in toys r us parking lots

    • Hi Dieter,

      I can’t see any reason you wouldn’t be able to attach a printhead to your router. You’d probably enjoy better performance than a DIY printer, because your CNC machine has rigidity and the bearings are precision machined for movement.
      I highly recommend MakerGear – Rick (who owns MakerGear) is a really great resource for 3D printer components and questions. Best of luck. If you get printing, let me know. I’d love to see what you come up with.

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