How low can you go? Or actually, how low do
you have to go to make a $175 3D printer?
Well, stick around to find out as we take
a deeper look at the Turnigy Fabrikator Mini
from Hobbyking, which is exactly that.
Now, surprisingly, this isn’t the only complete
3D printer you can buy for less than $200.
In fact, for probably the same price once
you factor in shipping, you can get a Prusa
i3-esque machine with an LCD, a heated bed,
and around 16 times the build volume of the
Fabrikator Mini. But if you watch my review
of the Malyan M150, a printer that is actually
a good bit more expensive than that, you’ll
get to see some of the flaws these rock-bottom
3D printers can come with. With something
like the Fabrikator Mini, you will get the
same experience anybody else is getting with
it because you will receive the same hardware
every single time - as opposed to simply buying
the cheapest i3 from a random seller and getting
a surprise package every single time. So what
is the Mini Fabrikator all about? Well, let
me show you its features! Actually, there’s
not a lot to talk about since there are not
noteworthy features per se. I guess the biggest
“feature” would be its size, as it only
takes up a 150mm square footprint on a desk.
This is small enough to fit in the actual
build area of most of my other 3D printers!
Of course, you do sacrifice build area on
the Fabrikator Mini that way, which leaves
it with an 80mm cube build volume. Sure, that’s
tiny, but i still think it’s a very usable
size for its intended purpose, in fact, probably
95% of the things i print fit into this volume.
The Fabrikator Mini is also surprisingly silent
once you add the included feet, which come
with a foam pad on their underside. These
also lift up the bottom of the printer to
allow for additional airflow, since some users
complained about overheating of the motor
drivers, which, in my case, didn’t seem
to be a problem. But only after i retuned
the driver’s current setting, which, out
of the box, is set so high that not only the
motor driver will shut down eventually, but
it will actually heat up the smaller-than-usual
NEMA14 motors so much that they will warp
the thin acrylic frame. On the other hand,
if you tune down the stepper drivers too much,
there are reports of these brass bushings
starting to bind and causing the motors to
skip steps, thus ruining your print. In my
case, it printed perfectly fine after setting
the driver’s reference voltage to about
0.7V. This is a bit higher than most viewers
recommended in the live unboxing stream, but
i had to add an external fan anyways, which
in this case also cools the motors, but mostly
serves as a part cooling fan. You see, this
printer is made to work with PLA - it doesn’t
have a heated bed, after all - and PLA needs
a part cooling fan to print well, which the
Fabrikator Mini does not have out of the box.
These two prints were done from the exact
same gcode, the left one without the fan,
the right one with. Quite a big difference!
Now, if you don’t want to just have a fan
sitting on the table next to the printer,
you can download and print one of the fan
shrouds you can find online - again, an advantage
of having a somewhat stable platform from
a single vendor.
Other than the printer itself, a power supply,
a few extra sheets of blue painter’s tape
for the bed and the feet, you don’t get
a whole lot in the package. I guess the PLA
sample isn’t really worth mentioning since
it’s literally just enough for, like half
a test print. The initial unboxing experience
is really simple - you load the print profile
into Repetier host - if you want to use Cura
or any other slicer, you will need to type
them in manually - adjust the bed height with
this little screw on the back, plug in the
bowden tube and you’re ready to print.
Now, the print quality in general is pretty
ok - especially for the money. Of course,
grey PLA does amplify any quality issues on
camera, but except for some slight layer inconsistencies,
it’s really ok. Which was expected, given
that the default print speed is a whopping
15mm/s - for comparison, i run most of my
other printers at 60mm/s, which is, i guess,
a normal speed. But on the Fabrikator Mini,
anything faster will start showing some artifacts
from the extremely weak linear guide system.
The first print i started actually used the
wrong slicing profile and had it printing
at 40mm/s, which worked, but it also only
had smooth surfaces, so there wasn’t any
risk of ending up with ringing artifacts.
It’s also set up for quite low accelerations
and uses a bowden system, so the forces on
this motion system are fairly low. Still,
XXmm unsupported linear rails and this tiny
M4 Z-axis spindle, which has a ton of backlash,
all in combination with the 4mm thin acrylic
frame are anything but trust-inspiring. But
in the end, it works! So i had the Fabrikator
Mini set up for a full day of printing, and
printed off 8 of these clamps that i’ll
be using in an upcoming project. Except for
some slight variations of the first layer
bed height, these all came out very consistently
and reliably. Pop one off, start the next
one, rinse and repeat, all day long.
So there are actually a few nice features
in here that you wouldn’t expect in an “as
cheap as possible” 3D printer. On is the
E3D v6 imitation, which, i mean, doesn’t
add a whole lot of value as-is, as, as usual
it’s not particularly well-made and uses
a heatbreak that is much too thick, wastes
a bunch of power, but also heats up the heatsink
so much that it’s incredibly easily to jam
the hotend if you pull out the filament too
slowly when swapping filament. What will happen
is that the filament will stick to the warm,
but not hot metal sides and form a pretty
solid plug, something the genuine one avoids
by not heating up the heatsink so far and
by putting a bit extra effort into making
the heatbreak smooth inside.
Also surprising to see here is the fully featured
MKS base mainboard. Five stepper drivers,
three power outputs, a heated bed output,
and as expected for a cheap-ish board, standard
Allegro stepper motor drivers and zero consideration
for component current limits or any sort of
failsafes. Ironically, though, now my smallest
and my largest cartesian 3D printers use the
exact same boards.
And the way the belts are set up here is pretty
ingenious. Instead of just using a single
loop, it uses this hoist-like system, which
reduces the torque needed from the motor and
also increases positioning accuracy.
And that’s why i kinda like the Turnigy
Mini Fabrikator - yeah, sure, it’s super
cheap and barely any features to write home
about, but it’s got that vibe to it where
it tries to do more with less and is mostly
successful with it.
Now, this machine is not designed by Turnigy
aka Hobbyking, it’s a project from TinyBoy
aiming to provide affordable 3D printer for
education - for that job, i think the way
the Turnigy version is put together with the
lack of a part cooling fan and the overheating
issues, it’s just barely not enough to fit
that bill. Educators are notoriously short
on time and typically don’t want to spend
it on getting a machine like this to work
well. But - and here’s the kicker - there
is a new version coming up, the TinyBoy 2,
which was launched on Indiegogo a good year
ago and should have been shipping by now,
but TinyBoy’s CEO dropped out for a while
due to medical issue and it looks like, they
now are actually producing the new machines.
I fully expect the new version to become available
at Hobbyking again, seeing that the original
one has been quite popular. As of right now,
this exact machine here is on backorder and
it looks like none have been shipped out for
a while, so i can’t really recommend ordering
it it right now. But it is a promising base
for that next model.
With this exact setup, you could make it work
really well if you can and want to do a bit
of tinkering, and with things like the fake
v6, the big bowden extruder and the MKS board
in there, you do even have the option of taking
this entire thing apart and using those components
to build something bigger if you feel like
you need the extra space.
So those were my impressions on the Hobbyking
Turnigy Fabrikator Mini aka TinyBoy v1.5 - if
you’re looking for a similar machine, but,
like, want it right now, check out my review
of the Printrbot Play right up here. Now,
for this video, if you enjoyed it, leave it
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And that’s about it, see you in the next
one or in this weekend’s livestream right
here on Youtube.
