3D Printer

Last June I backed the 101Hero 3D printer project on KickStarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/101hero/101hero-the-world-first-us49-3d-printer
On Friday, after a very long wait, it finally arrived. It took about 30 minutes to get set-up and working, and the picture below shows it in progress.

The wiring is not the neatest, have got some spiral wrap on order to take care of that. I am pleasantly surprised by this printer, it was very cheap for a 3D printer ($79), and there had been plenty of problems for people who got the earlier ones. However so far, it's not been too bad to set-up, and the results are not too bad.

The image below is the first 3D item I printed, not perfect, but, not too bad for the price of it. The ship is less than 5 cm (1.5 inches) in size, and there is a reasonable level of detail on it. One thing I have noticed is the filament that came with the printer is not very good, but the Rigid.Ink reel that my brother Rob got me for Christmas works much better, thanks Rob!

 This next image is of some coupling rods that I have designed for a Baguley-Drewry diesel that I am modelling for the Newbury Wharf layout (more on that loco to come in the blog). I designed them in Autodesk Fusion 360 (free for personal use, and seems to be a step above any other free 3D modelling package I have used - note to get it free you need to register on the autodesk site, getting it from the Mac app store seems to want to make you pay).

When I originally purchased the printer I wasn't expecting it to be good enough to use for items such as the connecting rods, so I am pleased with the level of detail that is coming out.