The Da Vinci 3D printer is, without a doubt, the future of printing plastic objects at home. It’s small, looks good on a desk, is fairly cheap, and most importantly for printer manufacturers, uses chipped filament cartridges that can’t be refilled.
[Oliver] over at Voltivo was trying to test their new printer filament with a Da Vinci and ran head-on into this problem of chipped filament. Digging around inside the filament cartridge, he found a measly 300 grams of filament and a small PCB with a Microchip 11LC010 EEPROM. This one kilobyte EEPROM contains all the data about what’s in the filament cartridge, including the length of filament remaining.
After dumping the EEPROM with an Arduino and looking at the hex file, [Oliver] discovered the amount of filament remaining was held in a single two-byte value. Resetting this value to 0xFFFF restores the filament counter to its virgin state, allowing him to refill the filament. A good thing, too; the cartridge filament is about twice as expensive as what we would normally buy.
I’m confused.
Is this an advertisement for a crappy 3D printer I’ve never heard of, or an article that’s trashing said printer for your usual inkjet bullshit of non-refillable cartridges?
For that fact, who on earth is the printer targeted at? It’s obviously not your usual 3D printer hobbyist, since they’re all a reasonably capable bunch and feed their own filaments depending on the job at hand. Which makes me think that they’re trying to target your layman consumer, but what the hell does a regular consumer need with a 3D printer? Is this supposed to be the second coming of the bug maker oven or something?
-SC
I think the 3D printer is so hyped that yes it’s becoming a thing the unknowing consumers buy, and then are left to their own devices what to do with it. things like ‘making personalized buttons for your children’s clothes’ and that kind of thing.
The hobby industry is the slimy used car salesman of the maker/hacker world. I’m glad there are people like [Oliver] out there keeping them honest.
I like that there’s an entire group of cousin “makers” who love being creative with stuff like scrapbooks and personalized home goods. I hate that the mark up on crap like inkpad stamps and wooden lettering is so high. It’s a bit predatory.
They have entire channels on TV hawking their ludicrously priced crap. I have a friend who likes making things out of card and painting, but she doesn’t buy the overpriced shite, just goes to a shop like normal people. I don’t see the attraction really, maybe it’s like hacking with a more feminine sensibility.
Is this another one of those up and coming “consumer 3D printers”?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/m3d/the-micro-the-first-truly-consumer-3d-printer?ref=live
It seems to me that it’s the same creative, expressive instinct, but maybe without the experience in the kind of engineering / design education you get with college and websites geared toward the internet-savvy generation.
I’d bet a lot of the homemaker market would love to transition to the maker market given the right exposure.
Yes Indeed hobbyist industry is a fickle money hungry child,
Traxxas
The RC company If you devise or show how to improve or make their products last such as how to use Everyday solder and wire to replace an O-ring on a drive shaft, Where the pin should’ve been a Cotter pin of design not an O-ring of Obsolescence, This happened to be a HOP-Up part/upgrade Which the O-ring consistently tears shreds etc.
The exact same as a BS the Printer companies use on their INK Cartridges the same ideals LIGHTING MANUFACTURES aspire to when designing so-called cost effective lighting, Bulb and illumination devices Alike have had their life spans decreased significantly.
Lights let you see how advanced does this get really they’ve not released anything to the consumer that would allow us to REALLY SAVE MONEY!.
White Goods life spans are terrible now a Fridge should last 20+ years it has one job and people still need to open the door as a Quad copter is not retrieving Items from an Industrial sized Cool room yet..
Hating all this new fangled crap..
That’s just the thing really. The final sign of maturity in this technology will be a cheap small box printer, mass produced, consistent results and easy to use. To make this cheap we will very likely see loss leaders. Ultimately this will result in printers in the hands of novices who will go for this sort of thing and subsidize the cost of the printer for those of us who will hack the cartridge for after market refills. The exact same thing happened with quality photo printers.
Reminds me of the Gillette business model.
Some geniuses heard of the “sell it cheap then rip ’em off on the consumables” idea, and are trying to see if it works on 3D printers.
2 problems, the first being you’re supposed to subsidise the price of the printer, significantly. The second being, you’re selling a universal constructor (more or less), to HACKERS. The first thing they’re gonna do is take the EEPROM out! Possibly printing up some new mechanism or thingy if needed.
For the “hobby maker” market you see on cable TV, this sort of shit seems quite profitable, but 3D printers are nowhere near as reliable, simple, or useful for that market yet. Apart from plastic trinkets, 3D printing is usually used as part of a bigger home-made electronics etc project.
It’s being targeted to grade schools and other similar markets. They have one on the desk at my kid’s school’s library.
The Cat Genie uses plastic pellets as litter and washes them with tap water and a dollop of quaternary ammonia. Commonly used as the third rinse in food and drink handling. It uses a chipped cartridge of the stuff at a huge markup. One of the chips is stripped of goo and is stuck to the corner of my main monitor. The last I followed on a users forum there was a C&D to someone marketing a plug-in spoofer to use a gravity fed solution.
I am so confused.
TLDR; You can refill cat genie cartridges and reset the chips and save a lot of money.
http://www.litterbox-central.com/litter-box/catgenie/topic3374.html
So the advice here: don’t ever buy this printer of you are not a hacker.
Ofcourse this printer is cheap because they are making money on the expensive cartridges. So you don’t own this printer it owns you unless you can hack the chip.
Good it got hacked.
No, bad it got hacked, because now people will buy it. And when it’s pervasive enough they’ll improve their firmware to encrypt the value and everyone will be back to paying ripoff prices for filament.
If it didn’t get hacked, nobody would buy it and it would sink without a trace. Which is the destiny that should be reserved for all DRM’ed products that prevent you from using 3rd party refills. (printers, 3D printers, coffee machines, etc…)
IMHO a better hack would be to strip out the custom electronics and replace it with a standard controller.
Very good point right here, this is the camel’s nose in the tent. I do think a better approach would be a good old fashioned shunning of the company until they come up with a way to make money without being assholes. If other manufacturers see these things selling they’ll try it too.
In what way are they being assholes? Because you don’t agree with their business model? If so, there’s nothing preventing you from buying one of the ubiquitous charred-plywood models and spending *your* time building and tuning it. I bought one of these because I see it as an important step in commoditizing the technology and making it available to a broader user base. It’s made by a real printer company (Kinpo), using technologies that actually scale for production (molded plastic, formed sheet metal) rather than horrendously inefficient one-off means. It’s the first printer I’ve found at a price point that I can justify for toy use. I figured that after going through a few spools of filament, if I like the mech I’ll just make my own controller and do away with theirs. I also assumed (rightly) that the community would pick it up and hack it, so within weeks to months I won’t even need to do that…somebody will have beaten me to it.
They’re assholes because they’re trying to lock you into a “gillette” scheme by putting in a chip that serves no purpose for the customer. If you enjoy using the thing then I’m happy for you but do you honestly enjoy paying twice as much for your consumables? Because them wanting to force you to pay twice the price of everyone else for filament in exchange for your customer loyalty is kind of an asshole move, imho.
And yes, I realize that most of the folks here aren’t going to put up with this and will defeat it, but a) quite a few people are either going to get soaked every time they run out of filament or the company goes under or they get fed up with their device and let it become more e-waste, just like what happens with inkjet printers every day.
And b) it might not always be this laughably easy to break these things out and fix the problem. I’ve got a zune 30 (won in a contest) that I would have loved to put rockbox on or use as a portable hard drive back when that was a thing, but Microsoft won. They made the device so ‘secure’ that it’s just too much of a hassle for people much smarter than I to figure out. So it’s now spare parts to play with for me, e-waste for pretty much most people who bought those turds. Maybe asshole is a little strong, but I just can’t think of a better word for people who peddle products with features that only serve to frustrate the end user.
Unless they have a way to force me to install the updated firmware I’m good with that. Plus there will be older firmwares floating out there that will fix that problem.
Phone makers keep “locking” phones, yet all of you keep buying them.
And most of us still unlock them using “alternative” methods. Here in Portugal unlocked phones are stupidly expensive. It’s a software “thing” and we’re not paying for a damn bytes in the wrong place.
Sure, and we keep unlock them using alternative methods… lol… paying more because some bytes off the place? yea sure….
Yup replacing the controller sounds like a good idea. As long as it’s good value for money for the parts you keep using. Obviously this is gonna harm the company’s profits, but any time anyone puts DRM in anything it flips my “evil” switch, so fuck ’em.
Just as an academic question, was there ever a use of DRM that didn’t involve ripping off customers? A good, admirable, use?
Yes?
DRM is often used to prevent people copying, say, floppy disks.
Fairly admirable. You buy it for youself so you shouldn’t really be making many copies of it for friends.
Software DRM is something I can theoretically fully support. Often the implementations are horrendous and only harm paying customers, while the pirates enjoy a more functional product.
As for physical DRM, that’s a shit idea. If you want people to keep buying materials, coffee, filament cartridges, etc, make them high quality or good value so that people will WANT to buy them. If you’re just putting cheap crap in a container and charging double for it because it’s the only thing that works with your machine, I have no sympathy.
Chipped batteries for mobile phones, perhaps? The claim is that counterfeit batteries are both common and dangerous. Given that battery replacement doesn’t really seem to be a significant revenue stream for phone manufacturers (no razor-and-blades model here), and dodgy Li-polys can spontaneously catch fire in your pocket, I’m inclined to believe that this is the one case of non-exploitive hardware DRM out there.
Oh, you are so correct. This DRM is why HP makes no money selling printers with small amounts of ink in overpriced DRM cartridges. Oh wait, they are one of the leaders in the consumer printer market. Fail!
No. DRM is always used to sell something overpriced, which is very cheap to produce. For example like 1$ for one downloaded song over your own internet connection.
Not sure it’s good, I think a boycott and a campaign to warn people to not get it until the company goes bust might be better
Like that ever worked.
Not often, but it’s possible. Although when it works they often just pretend to close down then re-open under a new name after 2 weeks :/
This printer was for sale at our local electronics store. The print quality is mediocre at best. The cartridges are extremely expensive also.
This is the reason I came to the comments. $500 seems so reasonable but if the quality is low I’ll pass.
You can build a Griffin for that much, or a Kossel Mini with plastic sliders as opposed to the linear slides. Both print good quality.
You can even get a PrintRbot kit for a lot less than than $500. However, you have to keep in mind that there is over $200 in 3d printer specific electronics alone in the average 3d printer. So when you buy a printer for $300, like the PrintRbot, it comes with some caveats. Currently, $500 is about the bare minimum for a decent printer you build yourself and for a complete, assembled decent one, expect over three times that, with decent kits falling somewhere in between.
People are pretty quick to get offended by chipped cartridges in printers, but how would you feel if you ran out of filament or ink half way through a print job and had to run out and get more. What if you had to order it? Job ruined.
Sure it seems like extortion but maybe someone was just trying to be helpful.
Having a counter for usability is one thing. But why can’t it continue printing after reaching “zero” if there are still ink left or you refilled it?
Cartridges “run out” often because they dry out, due to lack of use. No amount of fancy chippery will stop this. However if you are willing to clean and refil the cardidge, you will get the job done there and then.
I dont see what advantage the ink (or filament) level monitor gives you, except perhaps to remind you that you are being led by the nose back to the supplier for another expensive fix of ink (or fillament in this case).
I dont care the chip is there, what I care about is the cart is 10% full. That is ripping people off.
Except in this day and age, it’s much cheaper and easier to put a little chip in the cartridge that is consistently filled, say with 255ft of filament and have a microcontroller count how much is used and store it in the chip in the cartridge, and the cartridge has a mechanism to make sure the machine is always fed properly than it is to deal with phone calls about the machine not working because it’s not fed right and designing and implementing sensors to monitor how much filament is left. And, of course a manufacturer is going to want you to just buy your supplies from them so they know exactly the specifics of what you are getting, and know it WILL work with your machine. Also, if there are different plastics available that need slightly different machine settings such as temperature, they can store that in the chip as well. I don’t see this as ripping people off. It’s an inexpensive way of telling the machine what material you are feeding it and how much is in there. The only problem is when they try going after other people/companies that have reverse engineered how it works, or they try encrypting it.
“than it is to deal with phone calls about the machine not working because it’s not fed right ”
Except you don’t actually get tech support phone calls about your product when you alienate your potential customers and they end up not buying it.
It may alienate YOU, but HP seems to be selling plenty of printers despite doing this for years.
Sheepdog, true, this is the model 2D printer manufacturers all use. But their part of the bargain is selling the printers very cheaply. Probably still with some profit, they must have got the costs shaved way down now after 15 or so years of being a commodity item.
A lot like the final floppy drives on the market, for 2 pounds each, almost everything built into 2 stamped metal frames and a few doodads, with the spindle “motor” built into the assembly, rather than using an actual separate stepper motor like diske drives of olde.
The Gilette Model isn’t so much a ripoff as long as we get the printers / handles cheap enough. It’s still monopolistic but I can put up with it if there’s a benefit to go with it.
How do I know if I’ll run out of filament? Well, the slicer will give you a number that says how much filament is needed. A trained eye can easily tell if whatever is left on the spool will be enough. If not, it’s a simple matter of unrolling a bit of the filament to check. I’ve been printing stuff for over two years and I have yet to run out of filament mid print.
You make a good point about the machine knowing that it has enough filament. But a fair trade off for this feature would be a special user refillable cartridge that could be purchased by advanced users. That or published info on how to bypass the lockout through a service menu or otherwise.
This is also motivated by brand protection. If your company controls the filament put into it, it’s very easy to diagnose complaints and ‘issues’ with the printer. If their market is non-hackers, allowing people to feed any old filament into the printer will lead to bad reveiws when it fails due to user error
yes indeed it is a fine long term sales success strategy to tell your customers that they are wrong
instead of making engineering improvements so that the printer can handle alternative filament, blame it all on the customer
yes indeed this is surely the winning strategy that will eneble their success
It’s not so much saying they are wrong as it is lowering the bar of technical know-how for people to get into 3D printing. Not everyone wants to fiddle around optimizing settings when they switch plastics or suppliers.
By selling cartridged filament it enables the printer manufacturer to guarantee print quality. Sure it makes engineering on their part easier since they control the filament and know the tolerances, but it also allows them to have tighter design constraints in their printers since it will always be getting the same spec filament.
It’s not blaming the customer. It’s allowing them to focus on their design rather than setting up the printer.
Other people just look at what’s left on the spool. Very few people print such a large part that they’re in danger of running out unexpectedly.
The first duty of a chipped filament is to make buyers buy the first party filament, and that first party filament is often more expensive than top quality filament. Non-refillable cartridges is needlessly wasteful.
The business model is simple, sell the printer (one off sale) cheap, sell the consumables (repeat sale) at a premium. This is known as the “razor and blades” business model. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_cartridge)
This is why ink cartidges have such tiny capacity, typically the ink in a standard ink cartridge costs more per gram than gold or expensive perfume.
It wouldn’t take an engineering genius to produce a consumer printer with a 3 gallon ink capacity, the only problem is, it also wouldn’t make the manufacturer any significant amount of money.
This particular 3d printer business model is no different from the Inkjet and Laser printer business model, so should come as no surprise.
I happen to refill my ink cartridges, since it is far cheaper, and I dont produce a lot of e-waste. Most people can’t be bothered, so they throw them away, or perhaps recycle them.
Refilling cartridges won’t make me significantly richer, but it will make me feel slightly better about the whole crazy arangement.
I won’t however buy any printer that doesn’t allow me to easily refil the cartidges.
Isn’t this hack a violation of the (stupid) DMCA?
Not really, since all he has done is change the contents of a couple of memory locations, besides I dont think the company is US based, so DMCA wont apply.
If you want to apply crazy USA law, you need to apply it in the (crazy?) USA. The rest of us just have to put up with our local (often crazy) copyright laws.
Possibly a violation of DRM, but it’s such a modest percentage of the total sales that it will cost more to either re-engineer the system to prevent it or actually pursue the violator, so it creates a small grey economy of “refillers”. The HP engineer who developed a long-lived cartridge (it used to be that the cartridge would only barely last as long as the ink…if that) has commented that he regrets his efforts somewhat because of this.
What the readers of HAD often don’t see are things like institutional sales (a school system or corporation will just order cases of the OEM cartridges and won’t think about it at all), and the crafters/artists mentioned in other comments that simply consider it to be an expensive inconvenience.
From my observation it’s much more likely that some entrepreneurial sort (possibly reading this column today) will develop a snap-in substitute that works just fine without any working counter whatsoever (just a chip that gives the printer “the right answer”) and that can be refilled indefinitely – and will make a good profit for himself. Just look at all the refillable cartridges available for the Keurig. Granted there are more coffee drinkers than 3D printer users, but the principle holds.
The right to reset printer cartridges is well established law in the US. Seems like 3d printer cartridges would fall under the same ruling, but who knows, it might have to make its way up to the supreme court again.
What COPYRIGHT is being infringed upon?
Suddenly 0xffff is a copyrighted expression!
Oh no!
enter legal grounds for declaring numbers illegal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
Why is everybody calling the Filament expensive? Currently you can buy one filament Cartridge (0.6kg) for $28 shipped. That is $46 per Kg and Makerbot filament is $48 per Kg + Shipping. Yes you can find cheaper filament on ebay and amazon, but buyer beware! Sometimes it works great, but when you jam your extruder on a 20 hour print you probably won’t be a happy camper.
don’t worry or even bother to think, just buy the cartridges at whatever they cost
I made this for mine, Raspi’s rock. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP6uVo5R7Vg
Hi, how did you do that!! please share!!
Thanks,
Max
I have been on the fence with 3d printers and this model is the best built for the price. Bonus points it doesn’t look like a garage project like everything else and is at a affordable pricepoint.
I’ve been waiting for someone to break their DRM.
Off to buy one! Thanks Hack A Day!
da Vinci rep pls stop shilling
Fartface is… special. We love him, though. here’s a new tshirt design we’re working on, in fact.
haha
I wonder if you could not simply replace the feeder and bypass it that way (in case they up the DRM protection).
From what I understand the feeder part on 3D printers isn’t too complex.
So, I’m curious – a lot of folks here blasting “hobby printers” (I realize there’s a lot to learn in calibration, broken parts/filaments, quality of parts, etc.)
I’d love to own a Makerbot Z18, but it’s just well outside my price range. I’d also like to avoid the nightmares involved with a $300-$500 POS as mentioned above, so my question is this: What would the pros here suggest for a first-time, affordable (at-home) 3D printer? The Makerbot Replicator Mini is closer to my price range, but $1400 is probably the most I will consider spending for my (first) 3D printer.
I don’t plan on making buttons, toys and trinkets, but instead usable parts for hacks/robotics/creations.
So, what’s your favorite, affordable 3D printer?
I’d recommend most of the newer RepRap models. You can buy some preassembled, or in kit form, or you can save some money and source some of your own parts. I sourced all the parts to build my Prusa i3, but it was a lot of research because I came in knowing nothing about 3D printers. Outside of RepRap, Lulzbot makes fantastic open-source 3D printers, but they are $2,000. Ultimaker makes something around your price cap, but I don’t know much about them. Obviously, I’m biased toward the Prusa i3 since that’s what I chose. It’s a newer design, so the documentation isn’t fantastic yet, but that’s not so much of an issue once you actually have all your parts. 3D printing is moving fast enough that all the current closed source designs will be obsolete in a year or two, whereas most of the open source designs are intended to be self-upgradable.
http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_i3_Buyers_Guide
If you’re only going to be building *one* printer for the foreseeable future, I’d suggest getting a kit. I’m self-sourcing an i3 right now, and it’s going to be slightly but significantly more expensive than any i3 kit out there.
I would suggest an Ord Hadron or Maker’s Tool Works Fusematic. Kits can be had for $850 or less.
Personally, I like deltas, they are just mesmerizing to watch and use less desk space.
You can do a Griffin or Kossel mini for well under $800, with a Griffin coming in closer to $500. Both work just as good as any other open source printer and they are close to having almost entire automatic calibration. Calibration on a delta is a bit more difficult than others at the moment and I don’t think either is available in kit form yet.
If you want something ready to go, Ultimaker works well, as does Lulzbot. I’ve worked with both and both worked well.
They all have the same things to figure out and learn, and quality is pretty much the same across the board on newer designs, it comes down to what you want it to look like and how much you want to spend.
Looks like Voltivo took down the page.
Has anyone read a review of this printer? The one at Voltivo is unfinished.
Link worked for me.
Vote with your money, don’t buy any 3D printer that uses DRM or chipped filament cartridges.
I don’t think we have to worry about closed printers like this taking over the market. It’s not that I don’t think they will, I really don’t know what the future holds. But.. unlike an inkjet printer these printers have a built in way around the DRM. Use it to print a better printer! So what if all your non-technical friends and family some day own these? That’s their choice. Just buy a few cartridges, borrow the printer and print yourself a Reprap. Now if they some how manage to invent some super gotta-have-it printing technology that just simply cannot be replicated by people at home… then maybe it’s time to worry.
I very nearly bought this printer a couple of weeks ago. It really is the best spec’d printer at that price. I was put off by more than just the cartridge business, though. I went with an open source design (Prusa i3) for better community support/mods/parts availabilty. No regrets.
Well, at least it probably doesn’t leave half a damned spool of filament in the cartridge when the chip says it’s ’empty’ like Epson ink cartridges do. :P Still, good to hear someone stuck it to them. (Not that I’d probably ever buy one.) This kind of consumer-screwing BS is really the worst kind of somehow-still-legal scam.
I don’t understand why we can’t have laws that say consumers can do with a product what they want, and that– while free to go after third parties offering products that infringe on their copyrights –companies may not take measures to restrict the consumer’s ability to continue using the product. Basically, the end of DRM’d consumables, and forced obsolescence.
I mean, that seems pretty common sense, righ– Oh. I forgot, haha… Common sense isn’t.
Get over it…. The gist of the article is that you may be able to overide the settings of any cartridge., thats all. It was supposed to make you think, not complain.
Great article, I so badly want a 3D printer, I’ve started looking at brands, reading posts, etc. I’ve been looking at this one and wondering if something like DRMed cartridges was the business model. In the long run I suspect the smart move for me is to spend more on one that just has a spool mount.
Reminds me of Makers by Cory Doctorow – Disney released a 3d printer with proprietary cartridge. Life Imitating Art again! http://craphound.com/makers/
Given that new 3D printers are starting to detect “filament out” condition and pause, a chip in the cartridge to keep track of remaining filament isn’t all that necessary.
The chance that this style of chip will likely creep into the realm of DRM, its presence is a bit distasteful. 3D Systems is doing that right now, and they sell a little filament for a lot more than the other name-brand suppliers.
Not sure if this helps anyone but someone posted a 3d model on Thingiverse which adapts to the filament cartridge for the XYZ printer and uses Arduino Pro Mini PCB, spring-action push pins and a 3v button cell using votivo code. Here is the site:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:295750/#files
The commenters on that site are pointing out the new firmware is disallowing the 999 hack. It will still take 240m though. Hopefully they don’t get more aggressive with it, but that worries me. As attractive as the machine is, it seems risky to support this kind of business.
I bought one of these. Nicely built and works well. I originally was willing to give XYZ the benefit of the doubt that the chip was not DRM, but a way to make the thing user friendly by having all the material specs in the chip. So, when you change colors (which can change the melt temperature) or materials, the printer parameters are preset for you.
When XYZ came out with a firmware upgrade that suddenly had checks for the hack, I had to change my mind. What they “could” do is offer a “hacker friendly” firmware for a bit of money to eliminate the cartridge checks and allow the user to set parameters manually.
XYZ makes money, we get a nice cheap 3d printer. I’m not holding my breath, nor will I be updating my firmware just yet.
good evening …
I reset the cartridge chip filament Da Vinci 1 through arduino as explained in your guide. The cartridge is seen and recognized, but when I print, I get an error:
Cardridge 1 Error
Please remove cardridge and install again.
If errors exist, please contact service center for support.
ERROR CODE: 0008
I had the firmware 1.1.J and I downgraded to 1.1.I but the mistake remains.
What do you think is not working?
Thanks to all
Did you disable Internet access to xyz.exe in your firewall??
XYZWare checks your cartridges Serial Number! You will need disable access in your firewall and then re flash the cartridge again…
Personally I think the XYZ 3D printers are actually pretty nice.
No, they are definitely NOT for the DIY/Mod community but they offer fairly high quality 3D printers at a reasonable price. They are designed for the person that just wants to get started in 3D Printing or want a plug and play type of printer…
As for their filament being Soooo expensive as Excelfil is making them out to be, that isn’t really true. An XYZ filament “Cartridge” is just $28 shipped from Amazon, and that is for 600g or 240 meters of filament.
If you do the math compared with Voltivo’s Excelfil it comes out to:
XYZPrinting (600g, $28): 11.67 cents/meter
Excelfil ABS (1,000g, $48): 12.00 cents/meter
Excelfil ABS (1,000g, $45): 11.25 cents/meter
**It is ONLY the starter cartridge that comes with the 300g / 120m filament**
That said, the “resetter” is actually an extremely useful tool for someone with an XYZ Printer that is just a step above the “plug n play” user and wants to try different settings, colors, plastics etc!
With the filament cartridges being “locked” from the factory, one can simply refill an old cartridge or hang a spool on the side and away they go! The resetters can adjust the plastic type, color, etc as well as the print nozzle and heated bed temperatures allowing them to use nearly any plastic type and color and/or fine tune their prints – where they would normally be stuck with XYZ’s few ABS colors…
I am not trying to endorse XYZ in any way, you get exactly what you pay for compared to other brands or SLA printers! But, for only $399 (current price on Newegg) I think this printer is a steal for anyone looking to get into 3D Printing, or for someone that doesn’t want to assemble and program their own.
Between myself and a few of my friends we have 5 different 3D printers – a Makerbot V5, an SLA from 3DSystems, 2 custom built, and an XYZ Da Vinci 1.0a.
The XYZ Da Vinci does close to the Makerbot V5 for 10% of the cost, and pretty darn close with an E3D extruder installed! In fact, sometimes I think the XYZ does slightly better on bridges with the new E3D installed!
I don’t understand why some people have such an attitude towards beginners or these cheaper Plug N Play types of printers?! I know I couldn’t justify the cost of ANY 3D printer a few years ago until I saw one in action… If there had been a deal like this… $399 or $470 w/ 6 cartridges (3,600 meters!!) I probably would have gotten into 3D Printing a LOT sooner!
Just my 2 cents…
Sorry I did forget to mention one thing…
While Excelfil’s claim of being so much cheaper is untrue, $45-48 / 1,000g (vs XYZ equivalent $46.67)…
I will say that XYZ filament isn’t the greatest…
XYZ Red is outstanding!
Black, Yellow, Purple, Viridian are pretty good.
Other colors are mediocre to bad.
White and Natural are nearly unusable!!
So, if you are going to use XYZ filament go for RED (Hence the reason it’s sold out everywhere)! Or go with the others I listed, just stay away from all the others!
Even with the Red though, I really think XYZ Filament is recycled or something because consistency is an issue and it is not the same 1.75 mm on the entire spool, the size varies a little bit.
So, for nearly the same price and a chip resetter, definitely look at the higher quality brands!
Hopefully these posts help someone with an XYZ or deciding whether to purchase a 3D Printer…
Wow. I have wanted a 3D printer from the second I first saw one…??? No idea how many years ago that was now. I didn’t buy one then, and only two days ago decided to get an xyz because of price and the few reviews around all saying it was a better than expected printer, fully set up and ready to go without a lot of screwing around..I’m not a neophyte when it comes to electronics, but I have NO desire to spend thousands of dollars and months of work assembling and tweaking a hobbyist machine. I read through this entire thread and I can’t decide if I’m offended by the high handed, self righteous attitudes or to be amused by the naivety in thinking that your momentary rejection of their business model matters a lick to the company.
What seems to have escaped many of you is that they ARENT, in any way interested in you or your money in the slightest. They know you won’t buy one, and they don’t care; you aren’t the demographic they’re selling to..
For every hobbyist/hacker who already has a printer, there are at LEAST a 100,000 people like me; don’t WANT a $3000. Printer that you constantly tinker with, adjust and modify. They want a cool, inexpensive piece of technology to make custom buttons for their kids clothes, personalized key rings and stupid looking vases. THAT is the demographic who is also going to LOVE the preloaded cartridges and think $28 for a few hundred meters of filament is a heck of a deal. Will they fail? Oh hell no; they’ll do landslide business if they’re smart with marketing. I’m a UAV hobbyist; I remember all of the hobbyists saying DJI would fall on their face for many of the same reasons espoused here; they announced today that DJI would be the first commercial UAV manufacturer to do a BILLION dollars in business by years end.
Don’t be quite so quick to discount the stupid neophytes for not wanting the same things you do; the neophytes will BURY you in your smugness by buying tens or hundred of thousands of these things, either made by xyz, or someone else
You’re exactly right! I just had the pleasure (or rather displeasure!!) of using a $120,000 Printer that is used for prototyping commercial parts and what a joke!
Did it have 12 filaments to print from? Yes. Better print quality than the Da Vinci 1.0a? Yes. But, at the end of the day, the XYZ meets about 95% of my needs!! Add some Acetone vapor and it’s just about as good, the only noticeable difference was print size and speed.
If you really wanted to or you’re like me, there are plenty of upgrades for XYZ Printers available! I’ve upgraded my stepper motors, modified the print bed, heating element, firmware and slicing software, and I have a super fine E3D extruder/nozzle coming… It prints like a champ now and about 2x faster than factory! :) I’very tried ABS, PLA, NinjaFlex, wood and metal filaments, and so far no issues.
Printer $399, Upgrades about $100 (I’ve printed a lot and made, configured or designed the rest on my own)
BTW, if you think XYZ is a deal… take a look at “PeachyPrinter”! It’s a $100 SLA Printer coming out soon, I CAN’T WAIT to try it out!! No color, but detail is supposed to be outstanding :)
OK I lost the will to live about a quarter of the way through the comments of people bitching about business models etc. Do ANY of the comments actually explain HOW to do this OR can someone TELL me WHERE to look or WHO to ASK?
yes….. buy one of these and reset all of your carts any amount of times. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/131394592808?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
once i have one of that i can reset all my cartriges? and fill it with the filament i want?
You can check out Voltivo’s forum, otherwise I will have a working model available soon that adjusts the bed and extruder temp allowing you to use just about any filament on the market! (and a LOT cheaper than anyone else sells them for)