3D Printers and Printing

Vadym Chalenko: Designer, Inventor, and Manufacturer Vadym Chalenko began his career as a graphic designer and has created illustrations for a number of retail t-shirt customers. He also has an interest in photography/ videography, and therein lies the start of his journey from Inventor, to 3D printing to Manufacturing. Capturing Inspiration “Last September I was looking for another phone and was really surprised by the photographic and video-graphic quality of the new models. I selected a Galaxy S3 and started using it more as a camera than as a phone.” The Beastgrip is a universal lens adapter and rig system for Iphone, Android or Windows phones. “Overall, camera phones have [Read more…]

3D Printing, Math, Biology and Worm Locomotion Eva Strawbridge, Assistant Professor – Department of Mathematics and Statistics, James Madison University (JMU) and Jeff Kopsick, Junior in Mathematics and Biology are on an unlikely 3D printing journey. We’ll get to the worm locomotion part, shortly… Their story began when Jeff took an independent study course in 3D printing. He’d never seen a 3D printer in action and knew that his Dad’s company used one to design bottle cap prototypes. That was it. Once familiar with the capabilities of a 3D printer, Jeff was inspired, and wondered if a 3D printer could be used to create micro-environments through which round worms (Caenorhabditis [Read more…]

Robert Hughes of Lucky Bug Lures: “Fish Be Warned!” The Lucky Bug Lure Company is a family-run business located in Vancouver, British Columbia that has been growing steadily since 2000. Much of the recent increase in business is because of Robert’s design talent and, partly, due to recent investment in an Afinia Desktop 3D Printer. “Before we purchased our Afinia, it would take 6 – 8 weeks and many hundreds of dollars to get a single prototype completed. Now, I can bring in a drawing , my designer prints it and we’ll be fishing with the prototype yet that morning. We make adjustments during lunch, print a new prototype, fish [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…]

I received my printer tonight at around 8:30pm. I opened the box, followed the setup instructions and decided to do a quick test print. I downloaded a Dalek from Thingiverse and scaled it to one inch and hit Print. After unpack, setup, calibrating head height, loading and updating software, 15 minutes preheat and 22 minutes printing, the Dalek came off the printer at 10:15! Some minor cleanup, and it’s done. First print, and it was … Amazingly easy! [Read more…]

Thank you for your support of our teacher, students and school. The Target Range school community is fortunate to have innovative educators that bring practical experiences to our students. The 3D printer that you have supplied has increased our ability even more. Thank you very much. Partnerships are positive for education and I look forward to continuing our partnership with you. [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…]

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…]

I am a Mechanical Engineer with 23 years of product development experience. I have worked at several fortune 100 companies and have used several different kinds/brands of expensive 3d printers. The AFINIA H479 3D printer works very well and the output is comparible to machines I have used. I was very surprised and amazed at how the printer and software handled a small helical gear (1.25″ dia. X 0.375″ tall X 48 teeth.) Printed gear was functional. Start up kit was complete and set-up straight forward. Software occasionally hangs up when sending a print job from the PC to the printer, but a reset of the printer resolves the issue. [Read more…]

Very satisfied with Afinia 3D printer. Software works well. Machine does a good job making models. Accuracy is excellent based on this printing technology. Setup took a bit of time getting the platform level and printing height set. Have made many models for engineering school and old car restoration. Best to withdraw filament after a printing job. Have had filament stick and had to drill out nozzle. Reviewed by: Jerry Craig from St. Louis Missouri. on 2/10/2013 [Read more…]

When I first started researching 3D printing, I noticed that a lot of the 3D printing community were very into making their own printers, tweaking, upgrading, etc. I realized that while this was cool, I really just wanted something that worked out of the box. 3D printing is a means to an end for me, and I really appreciate that Afinia offers an affordable, high-quality, and easy to use printer for those of us that just want to print stuff. I really don’t think you could make it easier to get excellent results so quickly. If you’re not interested in spending valuable time building your own printer, then this is [Read more…]

…I bought one thru the Makershed. Finally a 3d printer that just prints when you hit print. [Read more…]

Great printer! We’ve been using the printer in our office nearly non-stop for prototype construction. [Read more…]

Great printer with great print quality! 🙂 [Read more…]

Damon Swanson is a Circus Model Builder. Our guess is that you don’t know anyone who does that sort of thing. It was a first for us, as well. He purchased his Afinia H-Series 3D Printer in late 2012. He likes to create his models in 1/8” scale (1/8” = 1 foot) and his existing 3D printer would only create suitable models down to ¼” scale, which wasn’t small enough. No stranger to 3D printing, Damon ran an engineering and design group at Honeywell and was able to convince management to buy a Stereo Lithography system 20 years ago. That system was the second one installed in Minnesota. He was [Read more…]