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Popular 3D printer vendor has come up with a foldable portable concept that's mindblowing
(www.techradar.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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Assuming every hinge there is motorized, that's 6 servos. That looks like a nightmare to calibrate, which it will need to do a lot of if it's shoved in some backpack for travel on a routine basis.
And the print head looks like a bitch to take apart to service if you get a jam.
Working with 6 axis industrial robots with astonishing repeatability precision, this still wouldn't be enough for a 3D printer
I'm doubting the practical feasibility as well
Yeah. And those industrial bots you work with are all metal, with high torque motors most likely.
Meanwhile this thing is going to be using the cheapest servos that can just barely meet the torque requirements, all in a plastic housing arm.
Gonna stick with my ender 3.
It’s really weird to take as pessimistic a view as possible on something that doesn’t even exist, and conclude that it’s terrible.
Yeah this thing would suffer really hard from over time degradation and you would have no way to fix it probably. Its like the Iphone of 3D printers. The beauty of 3D printers is exactly that everything is exposed and can be easily modified, repaired or replaced.
That image isn't even a mockup of what it could look like, it's probably just some AI generated crap. Those servo joints will never bend around the base to align with the height of it.
If you add position sensors to the servos you shouldn't need much calibration after the first go, no?
Looks like that arm would be a floppy noodle, it wouldn't surprise me if it needs re-calibrating halfway through a print just from temperature changes.
Honestly it's a cool idea to have a portable printer though, and it could be achieved but just differently.
Like what if you just took the basic design of a normal 3d printer, but made it snap apart and back together, and then made those pieces fit into the briefcase?
You'd just need two vertical pillars, one horizontal rod. Then the print bed itself could move in either the x or y dimentions since the print head would be stationary in one direction.
Hope that makes sense but in my head this solution is way more practical even if you needed to do a calibration after each setup.
Have you seen the Positron printer? Fits in a filament box when it's folded up, and takes just a few minutes to assemble. It's a very cool design.
Just looked it up. Is it shipping or just an idea? Seems clever tho!
link
Somehow this website just goes to https://example.com/ ?
Apologies, should be fixed now
It's a kit like the Vorons and not a pre built machine, but it's finished and is shipping.
Not to mention the vibration of the head caused from a single mount point. The engineerinh to keep anything close to the 0.2mm resolution common on non mobile printers. Will be expensive.
.2mm would be to little for me. I got my ender 3 pro to .05 and reley on that in my engineering designs