Mattel coming out with a $300 3d printer for kids.

Mattel is coming out with a $300 3d printer. They outsourced the software to Autodesk.



If you think about this, and keep in mind that popular internet image of the kids who made their own Pokemon card game, I think some interesting things will come of this.

Then again, I know what 14-year-old me would have printed.

I remember the "Thingmaker" as a kid. I always wanted one and never got one. It made worms and other scary things. This looks cool; whether or not kids can figure it out is another matter.

There's already a consumer printer for 300$ or less out there:
www.hongkiat.com/blog/affordable-3d-printer/

But those are all kind of weak. The really compelling one (the one I've had on my "gift list" for ages) is this:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/m3d/the-mic...-consumer-3d-printer

I had a 3D printer when I was a kid, and even adjusting for inflation, it was much cheaper than $33:

I had Creepy Crawlers, a set of metal molds that you filled with goo and cooked in a little plug-in cooker. Lot of fun.

I'm co-opting one of the high school printers to make fins for rockets.

SuperflyTNT wrote: There's already a consumer printer for 300$ or less out there:
www.hongkiat.com/blog/affordable-3d-printer/

But those are all kind of weak. The really compelling one (the one I've had on my "gift list" for ages) is this:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/m3d/the-mic...-consumer-3d-printer

That looks really interesting , and the PLA spools are only $14 for 225 grams. My school wanted $5 for a cubic inch of material.

I'm big into "making" so it's a natural fit for me to own one of these. Sadly, life has gotten in the way and I refuse to spend more money until my home improvement loan is paid. We killed off the wife's medical bills (who knew shoulder surgery was SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE???) but I'm pretty much KIA in the cash department for a year.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I'm big into "making" so it's a natural fit for me to own one of these. Sadly, life has gotten in the way and I refuse to spend more money until my home improvement loan is paid. We killed off the wife's medical bills (who knew shoulder surgery was SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE???) but I'm pretty much KIA in the cash department for a year.

Did you use the home loan to pay the medical bill? We have $5,000 in bills and that is with our high deductible insurance from work. Those 3d printers look so finicky and experimental. Maybe I'll find a cheap source of ABS and bring it to school and experiment a little.

I am very curious to the DPI of the printer. I am sure I will be buying one after the hacking community tears it apart. From the limited images it looks like that it should be the same quality as the $300 kits you can buy form China, so 30mm figures may be possible.



Look at the details in those dead eyes.

craniac wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: I'm big into "making" so it's a natural fit for me to own one of these. Sadly, life has gotten in the way and I refuse to spend more money until my home improvement loan is paid. We killed off the wife's medical bills (who knew shoulder surgery was SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE???) but I'm pretty much KIA in the cash department for a year.

Did you use the home loan to pay the medical bill? We have $5,000 in bills and that is with our high deductible insurance from work. Those 3d printers look so finicky and experimental. Maybe I'll find a cheap source of ABS and bring it to school and experiment a little.

I had 5Gs in an HSA account that had been parked for emergencies; the home improvement loan was to build a room onto the house where my wife could operate her Pilates business....but then she got in a car wreck that destroyed her shoulder, and she may not be able to go back to work doing that.

So, we've got a lawyer because the insurance company is stonewalling. It's a fucking nightmare.

I just started getting really interested in getting a 3D printer. That one Superfly linked to seems like a hell of a deal. I might pull the trigger on that.

I did end up buying the m3d printer, and got it today. My first print was a wereboar miniature, about standard size. I chose medium quality. It took 2 hours, looks like crap, and broke while I was struggling to remove it from the printer bed. That was with PLA filament. I then switched to ABS filament and tried to print a werebear, scaled down much smaller. That was a total disaster, I think due to the small scale. That took 54 minutes. Now I'm trying the bear but scaled up so it should be about 3 1/2 tall. It's a 3 1/2 hour job and seems to be going well.

Let's just say so far I'm not blown away at my new purchase. It was, however, relatively easy to get up and running.

hotseatgames wrote: I did end up buying the m3d printer, and got it today. My first print was a wereboar miniature, about standard size. I chose medium quality. It took 2 hours, looks like crap, and broke while I was struggling to remove it from the printer bed. That was with PLA filament. I then switched to ABS filament and tried to print a werebear, scaled down much smaller. That was a total disaster, I think due to the small scale. That took 54 minutes. Now I'm trying the bear but scaled up so it should be about 3 1/2 tall. It's a 3 1/2 hour job and seems to be going well.

Let's just say so far I'm not blown away at my new purchase. It was, however, relatively easy to get up and running.

I totally missed this! I would love to hear more stories about your 3d printing adventures, and pictures!

I'll work on getting some pictures. As for my adventures, the thing has sat idle for months. I have used it to make a couple of parts for board game prototypes, but my original intent was to make custom minis for a prototype. As it turns out, the resolution on this printer is so lame that the minis looked terrible, and the print time is so long that it would have taken many days just to produce the requisite number of figures. I didn't have the patience. Since that time, they have released updated software that can print multiple copies of a model at once, provided there is room, of course. So, for example, you could print 4 spiders at once. This is a risky proposition; if something goes wrong, you have 4 failures instead of 1.

This was pushed to next year
www.engadget.com/2016/09/27/mattel-thingmaker-3d-printer-delay/