easythreed

2 Articles

Can A Toy Printer Be Made Great?

June 9, 2024 by 19 Comments

Now that the bottom end of the 3D printer market has been largely cleared of those garbage “Prusa i3 clone” models which used to infest it a few years ago, a new breed of ultra-cheap printer has taken their place. EasyThreed make a range of very small printers pitched as toys, and while they’re no great shakes by the standards of most Hackaday readers, they do at least work out of the box. For their roughly $75 price tag they deliver what you’d expect, but can such a basic machine be improved with a few upgrades? [Made with Layers] has taken a look.

These printers have an all-plastic snap-together construction with a 10 cm by 10 cm bed and a set of small geared stepper motors driving their axes. He concentrates on stiffening the structure, upgrading those motors, and because he’s sponsored by a 3D printer electronics company, upgrading their controller.

The motors were replaced first with some NEMA 11 steppers, and then by some over-sized ones which maybe push the idea a little far. By moving the motors to a bracket he was able to free up their mountings to secure a 3D printed insert to stiffen the arms. Perhaps he’s pushing it a little for the video with the electronics upgrade, but we think there’s a happy medium with the smaller of the two motor upgrades and the stiffening.

So if you have an EasyThreed in your life it’s possible to upgrade it into something a little better, but it’s worth asking whether that $75 might be better spent in saving for a better machine in the first place. We’ve been curious about these tiny printers for a while though, and it’s interesting to have some more of our questions answered.

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The Sub-$100 Easythreed X1 3D Printer, Is It More Than A Novelty?

June 21, 2022 by 20 Comments

There was a time when a cheap 3D printer meant an extremely dubious “Prusa i3” clone as a kit of parts, with the cheapest possible components which, when assembled, would deliver a distinctly underwhelming experience. Most hackerspaces have one of these cheap printers gathering dust somewhere, usually with a rats-nest of wires hanging out of one side of it. But those awful kits have been displaced by sub-$200 printers that are now rather good, so what’s the current lowest end of the market? The answer lies in printers such as the sub-$100 Easythreed X1, which All3DP have given a review. We’ve been curious about this printer for a while, but $100 is a bit much to spend on a toy, so it’s interesting to see their take on it.

It’s a tiny printer marketed as a kid’s toy with an unheated bed and a miniature 100 mm cubic print volume, so we don’t blame them for pitching their expectations low. They found the supplied slicer to be buggy, but the printer itself to be surprisingly better than they expected. It seems that the Easythreed can deliver reasonable but not superlative small prints amid the occasional disaster, but for under $100, we’d guess that any print is a result. Still, we’ll join them in their assessment that it’s worth spending a bit more on a better printer.

We’ve seen another tiny Easythreed model before, when someone made a novelty wrist-mounted wearable version.