The Polar3D 3D Printer - Very Impressive

I discovered the Polar3D 3D Printer at the ISTE Education Conference in Philadelphia last week, where many 3D printer companies attempt to capture educator attention right along side other education technology products. When I saw this printer - 15 of them in fact, all cranking away printing models - I immediately knew it was different and that I needed to try it.

The small footprint, unique radial bed design and apparent simplicity of the technology is what attracted me. The two passionate and experienced engineers who invented this product, who were also running their own booth and answering questions, also got my attention. The web-based printer command center put me over the edge.

Setting it up

From un-boxing to printing took me about 20 minutes. I was being careful and slow, but the one page description which came with the printer - while brief - was pretty much all I needed to get this simple printer into action.
The hardware setup was ridiculously simple. This printer is basically two parts in the box, not counting the power cord and the (almost hysterically funny) cannister of hairspray which is included. Hardware setup was one step (not counting again the plugging in of the cord). The print bed - a round piece of mirrored glass with a big gear on the bottom, just sets into place to fit with the gear on the printer. That, it turns out, is the genius behind this printer's radial design - which overall reduces the moving parts and belts and other things that could go wrong.

Getting the WiFi connection set up was also simple, but to be fair,  might be harder for people who have not done something like this before. Basically it was a matter of connecting my computer to the printer's WiFi signal, then telling the printer about my home WiFi so it could connect itself - then reconnecting my computer to my normal WiFi. Alternatively, I could have connected my computer to the printer directly via ethernet.

The Hardware

The Polar 3D is small and sturdy. It measures just 8 inches wide, 15 inches high and needs approximately 15 to 21.25 inches of depth (12.75" base + 2.25" for the bed movement forward and another 6.25" for the filament spool holder, which is optional). This especially narrow footprint achieves a build volume of 8 inches in diameter by 6 inches high. The radial movement design is what accounts for this rather generous build volume in that small footprint, as the extruder only has to travel the radius of the circular bed - meaning the bed spins as it moves back and forth on the y axis - rather than the whole distance of the y or x axis.
Full specs can be found at the Polar3D website.

The printer is strong and weighty enough in a good way without being too heavy. It is practically all metal, except for a plastic molded handle insert which makes it comfortable to carry. That handle and the small physical size makes it basically mobile, and I wouldn't hesitate to take this printer with me to a school or to the office or even a friends house to show it off and print stuff for a few hours.

Some additional nice hardware features include the built-in micro-camera, which lets you watch your prints live, the easy to remove/clean circular bed, which is by far the simplest design I've seen yet, and the incredibly simple extruder design, which makes loading filament easy. That extruder design lets you use multiple filament types such as Ninja-Flex in the single extruder (by the companies claims only so far - I have not tested this). These are not actually small things - they could be huge differentiators if they all pan out to be working as expected.

The built-in Raspberry Pi micro-controller provides strong performance, connectivity, on-board model storage (16Gb, with about 8Gb avail for models) and more. There are also several connectivity ports, including Ethernet, USB Serial port and a USB Thumb drive port for direct access to stored model files. The printer also includes WiFi - it emits a WiFi signal to gain initial connectivity where you configure it to connect to your local home or school network. This is how I have used this printer thus far with practically zero issues (one time it disconnected and had to be reconnected).

The Software (Web Services)

The Polar3D is more than just a printer. It is a set of very powerful software products and services which have actually made the experience of using the printer an absolute delight. All their software is either installed on the printer directly or available through the web-based cloud services. With my beloved Lulzbot TAZ4, I still use an SD card to run models back and forth between my Mac and the printer for printing, or I connect my Mac directly to the printer. With the Polar3D, I do everything through the web - sending my models for printing directly to the printer. This will be how things are done much more broadly, I am sure.

The Printer Control Panel. 

The built-in camera lets me see the print live in progress,
and see the kids watching it ;)

Polar3D provides a cloud service where you can connect, and control, your printer and even multiple printers. I'm interested to know how to get non-Polar3D printers connected now that I've used and learned to love this part of their offering. I saw the founders control their 15 running printers from their Polar3D cloud interface at the ISTE conference where I met them - and it was incredible and useful.

Since each printer also has a camera onboard, you can see the progress of every print live from anywhere you can gain web connectivity. To go one step further, every print job run is saved in the printer's history - so you can see information about all the prior print jobs, and - wait for it - you can watch a time lapse" video of any prior print which is automatically saved! I can also see the configuration settings from that history and download the STL among many other options. #mindblown

The control panel is one of the most impressive aspects of this company's software offering - and I was initially sure that it was a turn-key provided by another vendor, but it's all theirs. That Web-based (Multi!)printer control panel seems like something that quickly needs to become a service offered separately from the physical purchase of their printers - similar in a way to what MakerBot did with Thingiverse.

Clubs, Objects, Projects and more

The capabilities to organize objects and projects online, through a web-based interface, are also extensive in the Polar3D cloud service. They offer Clubs, Objects, Projects, Collections and more.

Clubs give you the ability to virtually have your own object sharing service which you can manage while inviting others to participate or co-manage. I can see this being used effectively in schools, tech clubs, maker-spaces and more.

Objects (3D Models) can be uploaded and shared through the Polar3D service and the common "favorite" count and "collect" count lets you see how popular they are.

Projects provide educators a place to describe lessons related to 3D Printing, allowing uploads of supportive materials like documents and images. This is a much more general capability than something tied to 3D Printing specifically.

Collections and subjects allow another level of managing and organizing objects. There are public collections and club-based / private collections.

I haven't used all these capabilities enough yet to give a detailed review or critique, but I'm excited about the abilities to both organize and even "white-label" my own collection of objects for both managing and sharing. I'll write more on this later for sure.

The Slicer.

Polar3D integrated the CURA open-source slicer into the printer so that you just feed it objects (.STL files) and it slices and dices (I mean, prints) the object directly. You can get into the CURA settings if you want to, but the point for some people will be that you shouldn't have to. I've found my early simple prints to be really good on the default settings, with minor issues only when I tried to do things like remove supports on a print which really did need some. The interface to the CURA settings is certainly different than CURA itself, but it was easy to find my way around - with tabs for Quick Start, Basic, Advanced and Start/End Gcode.

The Modeler (?).

Yes - there is even a modeling capability built into the Polar3D software stack. That said, I don't use it and didn't really go beyond building a simple stack of shapes. Nor did I try to print anything made in it. I don't see the need for this, but it's potentially useful to have it in cases where you just need a simple model or adjustment in a pinch and forgot your password to TinkerCad or 123D Design ;) (I use the latter and see no reason to change that).

The results

I've printed about a dozen, mostly small, models and I must say the results are incredibly good. When I tweaked the slicer settings to my liking - such as improve the quality (reduce the layer height from 0.32 to 0.2), the results were impressive and consistent. I even tried to print the small, challenging interlocking "Alpha-let" bracelet links, which require good, small precision for the interlocking design to work - and it printed 9 links at a time with perfect results. The prints from this printer required even less cleanup than my TAZ4 (which everyone knows I love).

Since I only had blue 1.75mm filament), I printed one of my favorite blue models - the Google Docs icon I designed very early in my 3D Printing life. I printed one alone, which came out perfect. I tried to print 6 at a time, and again, all 6 came out perfect.

The best test was my own 3D Hinge design. This one is challenging, as it prints both sides of the connected hinge in one run with only 0.4 - 0.5mm between the moving parts - giving lots of opportunity for unwanted binding of the moving parts. There was definitely some unwanted binding in this print - but with a little cajoling and loosening the intended gaps with the clam knife (my favorite 3D Printing tool), the hinge loosened and worked like a charm.

Some early models printed on the Polar3D. All Blue ;-/

Summary

The Polar3D printer is unique in ways which make it very desirable - not just novel. The narrow footprint, simplicity of the hardware, quality print results and robust web-based printing control software all top my list of positives. Of course, the price point - $599 for educators and $799 retail - make it truly a reasonably priced printer for schools and others. Seeing 15 of these printers cranking away making models all night and day at the ISTE education conference gave me initial confidence that this printer was for real - and trying it on my own so far has proven the reliability (albeit early) beyond a doubt. If it turns out that I can actually print multiple filament types - like Ninja-Flex - through this one extruder... wow, that'll really be a bonus!

On the downside.... uh... well.... the build volume could of course be bigger and the power supply transformer could be slightly quieter. Of course there are also small things I might recommend be changed in the software design (if I stretch), but overall, it's incredible how much this small company has already achieved and provided in this printer.

While only having used this printer myself for about 10 days, so far, I highly recommend it. I'm excited about how the unique radial design has simplified the mechanics and how the web-based printing control truly makes life easier (well, for 3D printing, not life in general ;).

A Girl's Introduction to #3DPrinting (guest post)

This is a guest post from Leila - the daughter of two awesome educators (@iwearthecrowns and @mr_isaacs) who is going into 7th grade. Here's her Bio in her own words: 

Hi my name is Leila(boo215) and I LOVE 3D printing!!! I am so happy that my school has a 3D printer and that the teachers are so nice to me! Also I love that so many kids can connect through maker clubs and 3D printing. I'm an all star cheerleader and did ski club and running with my school this year, and just a little fun fact, I ran two 5K's in two weekends! I am going to run cross country next year for my school!

Hi, my name is Leila and my parents made me go to the VR mini hackathon at the Bergen makerspace a few weeks ago. I didn't want to go for the whole day because it was too early so I went for the afternoon... where I then discovered tinkercad. The mentors all had a really cool name tag that I HAD to learn more about, here is what they looked like(the square on the left).

I wanted to know how they made them and one of the mentors showed me the 3D printers. The students got the key chains(to the right). We had issues for taking my blue one off that I made because the letters were holes and it got stuck on the base, where the 3D prints are printed. 

Once I found Tinkercad which is a 3D design tool, I went right into making my whole family's Twitter handles - you can see how they looked in the pictures here.

I was a part of the AVON39 Youth Crew - a walk to end breast cancer - and because of how excited I was to be able to use the 3D printers, I went right into designing this design on Tinkercad.

I made them overnight at my school but they sadly got messed up, so luckily, the teachers of that classroom were so nice to redo the prints!

3D Printed Google Cardboard keychain

There are so many useful things you can do with a 3D Printer - yet I keep finding myself wanting to make useless but creative 3D Product logos... I've done Google Sheets, Docs, Slides, Forms, Classroom, Forms, Google Drive, even Gmail. I've even posted the models at that link so people can print these for themselves.

This week, inspired by our recent announcement of Expeditions, I decided on a whim to do a miniature rendering of Google Cardboard.

I actually started this 3D Model as a possible working Cardboard unit, but decided to first try it in miniature to make sure the relative dimensions were close to accurate. Once I shrunk it down, I couldn't help but add a keychain hole and make it just a trinket to give to friends and others who work on the Cardboard team. It's tiny and super cute.

Keep an eye out for a working model soon(ish). I'm sure I'll get to that eventually, and it's much more of a challenge than the keychain trinket version. But if you see me this week at the ISTE Education Conference, I can show you the keychain version in person.

Computer on the Wall - a Middle School Maker project

I participate as a parent in our middle school Tech Club - the TechDetectives. The 8th graders in the club came up with this great end of year project idea - they wanted to take apart one of the lab computers and re-mount all the parts on the wall so that future students could easily see all the parts of this working computer. It was something they saw done on YouTube.
I've been calling it the "CoW" (Computer On the Wall).

I loved this idea - and quickly volunteered to help out after school - knowing we didn't have enough time in tech club before the end of their graduating year to finish it. As I described in a few posts previously, this project also turned into a great opportunity for some #3DPrinting solutions.

The Take-Apart

This was how it all started - taking the computer apart. We chose our victim (desktop PC), with the guidance of the group's teacher leader, from the 20 or so computers in the Tech classroom. We decided that we'd almost certainly get approval for this, especially since the school recently went 1:1 with Chromebooks, so we just dug right in. Pretty much anyone has fun taking things apart - so the students immediately started unscrewing, unclipping and disconnecting wires. They took pictures as we progressed in case we (or someone else) decided to cancel this project - so we could figure out how to put the computer back together again.

We created a hand-drawn map of the wiring so that we could re-connect parts in the right place on the mother board. There were hardly any challenges at this step - as desktop computers in large cases are pretty much made for upgrading - which means removing and replacing parts.

The Board Design

We planned on hanging the parts on the wall on a board - so it was important to figure out how much space we needed so we could acquire a board of the right dimensions to hold the parts. We talked a bunch as a team about different challenges - like how and where to run the wires, where to put the switches and plugs that were attached to the original computer case, and more. We also brainstormed a bit on added features we might want to add - like cool lighting or signs. In the end we stuck mostly to basics - except for the Big Red Button, which I'll explain below and was highlighted in a separate post.

We laid all the parts on the board which is about 14" x 28". Once we were comfortable with the layout, we started looking for ways to secure all these parts. The Motherboard - the centerpiece of the computer - looked simple. It has holes for mounting with screws. But all the other large parts - Hard Drive, Power Supply, CD Drive - had no obvious mounting method. We would need straps or strong glue or....or... 3D Printed Brackets! Oh, isn't that always my motive... See the next section for more.

While we planned to have some cool lighting on the board, in the end we really just ran out of time and settled for placing the existing LED on/off lights inside the Big Red Button box. It looks cool, but as of this writing still has a slight short circuit which needs to be fixed before hanging the project on the wall.

3D Printed Parts

There were a few things that we decided 3D Printed was truly a great option. I have previously posted about all of these - so  I'll point to those posts here and keep it short.

1 - Brackets for mounting - this allowed us to make custom fit brackets for each part.

2 - Speaker Box - without the computer case, the speaker had no home. It was like a turtle without a shell, until we created the perfect home for it.

3 - On/Off Switch - aka The Big Red Button - we made something seemingly boring, the focal point of the whole project. This was complex, but achievable.

The Result

This was a great project, with lots of hands-on mechanical interactions, some electrical connections, a bunch of testing of the equipment after mounting and re-wiring and even some painting (the board ;). The team was quite proud and presented the CoW (Computer On the Wall) to the school as their tech club legacy.

We're expecting to have it hung in the computer lab over the summer, clearly marked with "Class of 2015" and perhaps encouraging a tradition of each class taking apart one more computer each year and leaving their mark.

A 3DPrinted Speaker Box

When we decided in our school tech club to pull all the components out of a desktop computer and mount them on the wall (post on that coming soon), we didn't really expect this to turn into a 3D Printing project. But without the computer case, turns out there are lots of parts which need a home - and a few custom things where 3D Printing came in handy.

The Problem

Besides the Power Button (which resulted in the Big Red Button) and the custom brackets to hold all the main components, it turned out we also had an orphan speaker which needed a home. Sure, we could have just hot-glued the speaker to the board - but #3DPrinting a custom solution seemed like much more fun. We decided to craft a 3D model of a small box to hold the little speaker.

The Model

The design is quite simple, and the main challenge was to line up the screw holes with those already on the speaker component itself. 

Once we got that done on the bottom part of the case, we replicated it to make the top and cut holes in the top to let the speaker sound come through. We also added a couple of mounting parts for screws modeled after those we used on the Big Red Button.

The Result

We're quite happy with this small part of our larger project. The slots which let the sound escape are little less clean looking than we had hoped, so next time (yeah, right, I'm sure we'll do this again) we'll likely make those a bit wider and do more cleanup on them. The screw holes took one iteration to get aligned right, but once they were aligned, they worked really well. The slot on the side to allow the wires to enter the box was a good plan and don't detract from the aesthetic of the box at all. The mounting brackets for the screws also worked well.

Custom Brackets - 3D printing is perfect for School Maker project

As part of our middle school tech club's "PC on the wall" project (which I'll describe in full in a future post very soon), we found a few opportunities for using 3D Printed custom parts. I've already posted about the on-off switch - which we aptly called the Big Red Button. This time, I'll share how we created custom brackets to hold most of the PC components to the wall board.

The Challenge

Once we had extracted all the main components from the PC case, it was obvious we needed some new method of holding these things against a board that would hang on the wall. We thought about creating straps out of canvas or even duct tape, or perhaps making custom wood brackets. But it struck us that 3D Printing might actually be the most efficient and flexible solution to this problem.

The Solution

Each component has different dimensions and weight. Besides holding the component to the wall, we also hoped to raise each component away from the wall board by just a little bit to help with cooling and perhaps leave room for some lighting for decoration. The brackets could follow a simple consistent design and just be measured to fit each component. We used our caliper to measure the height of each component away from the wall and that was pretty much all we needed to know. The width and length of the components didn't much impact the design, except in the case of the power supply - explained below.

The Design

Each bracket has a spacer for under the component and a screw hole to hold the bracket firmly in place. Then attached is a simple "L" shaped part which extends away from the wall board and over the top of the component by an inch or so.

The power supply needed a slightly different approach given it's weight and height away from the wall board. For that we designed something that looked more like a strap - a single part that started on one side, went over the top to extend the width, and ended on the other side - with screw holes on both sides. This worked really well.


The only other customization required was one bracket for the CD drive, which had a slightly uneven top height - we designed one of the brackets to specially fit into that spot. again, the customization worked like a charm.

Here's a quick view of 2 sizes of the simple design.

Here's a partial picture of the finished mounted components.

Gmail catches up to Google Docs - with a 3D Printed Logo

Showing off my 3D Printed Logos of Google Docs, Drive, Sheets, Slides, Forms and Classroom at work gets other Product Managers in an envious state.

"Where's the Gmail logo?"

I heard that almost immediately, and at every subsequent showing, from the Gmail guy.
Well - as I explain to the Gmail guy, the Gmail logo, as we all know, is two-color, so quite challenging for a single extruder printer.

"You figured that out for the Drive logo - do it for Gmail!".

OK - done.

The Design

The Gmail "M" is red and the "envelope" is white. I created small protrusions on the "legs" of the M which fit into small receiving holes in the sides of the envelope. I also created a base in the envelope so that the protrusions on the M could be printed flat on the print bed and not show from the back of the logo when put together. This also makes it so that the M could not be seen from the back - which may have looked good, but definitely not necessary.

The M is also made so that the top part of the M is higher - a larger Z depth - to make it look like the edge of the envelope flap... exactly as done on the 2D graphic of the Gmail logo. Otherwise, it's a really simple model.

The Results

The first pair (envelope and M) I printed were not a perfect fit by any means - tool lots of cleanup of edges on the M to fit it into the receiving space on the Envelope - but I got it to fit and made some adjustments in the model to give some more room for error (more clearance) without making the fit too loose. The red filament I used - from Ultimachines - also tended to be a bit over extruded and oozy - so there was more of a brim than expected. I also think the humidity had an effect on the day I printed this particular model.

The current version of the model prints well and is easy to put together. Looks great as a useless keychain ornament... You're welcome, GMail guy.

The Model

If you want to try printing this yourself, the STL files can be found on the Google Product Logos page. Warning: on my printer, the bottom layer is almost always a bit squashed and creates a slight brim which needs to be shaved down with a knife a bit to fit well into the white part.