As many of you have certainly already heard, HobbyKing recently launched the successor to their Mini Fabrikator 3D printer. I have been looking for a smaller printer for a while, so as soon as one turned up at the HobbyKing global warehouse, I put an order in!

I probably should have waited until they arrived at the EU warehouse. Even though they are cheaper from Hong Kong, the cost of DHL shipping brought it up to the same price as they are listed at in the EU warehouse and the fact that I got stung for 25% VAT plus charges from the Swedish customs service makes the final price around $250 including shipping.

Even so, for a fully assembled printer that has a hot end that will go all the way up to 250°C, has a heated bed, offline printing, filament cooling fan and a good quality, rigid construction, this is a good price!

The printer has a 100mm x 100mm bed and will print up to 100mm tall. While this is half the area of my Prusa i3 printer, many of the things I need to print for the RC hobby fit perfectly into the smaller print area of the Fabrikator.

Here it is set up on a cabinet beside my work bench:



This is a tiny little printer! It's 170mm wide, 182mm deep (or 240mm if you include the motor for the extruder) and 278mm tall, including the vibration dampening feet that it sits on.

Some more facts and figures: The heated bed only goes up to 60°C, which might present a problem if you want to print ABS, but the bed is also coated with a sheet of black PEI which gives excellent grip for PLA at least (which is all I've printed so far). Don't clean the print bed with acetone! It doesn't seem to damage the PEI, but it will remove the black pigment from it which is why my print bed has the white marks on it.
The printer is powered by an external power brick that delivers 12V at 7A and is connected to the mains with a standard three pin IEC plug. The brick works on anything from 100 - 240V, so if a Fabrikator with your choice of mains plug isn't listed, you can order one for any country and just replace the mains cable with one that matches your local mains socket. (I ordered one with a US plug and just threw the US mains lead away.)
The printer is designed for 1.75mm filament and has a 0.4mm diameter extruder nozzle.

The rear of the printer has an on/off switch and a socket for the 12V supply. There's also a slot for the included spool holder (more about that in a bit).



The right hand side of the printer has a micro USB socket, a microSD card socket and a control button.



If you place a g-code file named "auto00.g" in the root folder of the microSD card, insert the card into the printer and power it on, the button lights up orange. A single press of the button tells the printer to start printing the "auto00.g" file and the button will then turn blue to indicate that the print process has started.

The spool holder is a simple metal bracket that slots into the rear of the printer:



It sounds like a great idea! With your spool of filament on the rear of the printer, it keeps the width of the setup to a minimum.



Except there's a problem:



I don't know that size spools they designed this for, but my standard 1kg spool of PLA binds against the bottom of the extruder stepper motor which makes it useless for me. Thankfully, I had a spool holder from my Prusa i3 that could be used instead.

The printer comes with a 2GB microSD card which contains some (Windows) software and some test prints. The manual needs to be downloaded from HobbyKing. Also included on the card are some settings files that you can import into Cura to set the slicer up for the Fabrikator.

One excellent feature for the price is that the hot end includes a fan to cool the filament as it is extruded - something that's an essential for printing overhangs. The fan is fully software controlled so that it can be off for the first layer and then turned on at a variable speed for subsequent layers.



So far, so good!

There are some niggles...

Levelling the bed is a pain. Because the screws used to adjust the bed height are inside the frame, the rear ones are particularly difficult to get the supplied 2mm hex key into. This shouldn't have to be re-done too often, especially if you don't move the printer around.

There is no way to adjust the micro switches that are used to detect when each axis has reached the home position. This results in the head moving to a position slightly behind and to the left of the print bed when you home all axes:



This is reflected in objects that the slicer thinks are positioned in the centre of the bed being printed at a point that is actually further back and further left than the real centre. Some offset changes in the configuration should solve this and I'll post them when I've worked out what they should be.

I'm running the printer with Repetier Host and Cura on Linux. The printer does have a WiFi interface, which would make up for the fact that is no way to control the printer without connecting to it, but the only way to configure the printer's WiFi is via a Windows only program that won't work in a virtual machine because it needs access to the PC's WiFi interface to scan for available hot spots.

I have some PETG filament on order which I'll be testing with soon. I don't really want to print ABS as I live in an apartment and don't really have anywhere to put the printer where I won't be subjected to the fumes from ABS.

The other thing that needs to be tested is if the extruder will handle flexible filament. As the extruder uses a Bowden tube, it is very unlikely that it will print the softest flexible filaments, but I'm hoping it will handle the Ninja Semiflex that I have.

I've only had the printer for a day and there's some more fine tuning and testing to be done, but all in all, I'm pleased with it. As a budget printer for our kind of use, it's a good choice.

Nice little printer (lots of features for the price!) and nice review. Can the printer also be controlled (and/or configured) via USB? I noticed the slot. Do you know what the controller is?

Thanks! It's not really a review yet as I've only had it such a short time, but it gives you the basics at least.

If you plug the USB into your computer, it comes up as a serial port and  you can control the printer from Repetier Host or any other control software that speaks the Marlin dialect of g-code.

As far as I know, the controller is a 32-bit card based on the STM32F1 MCU and would seem to be the same controller that is used in the MP Select Mini (which like this printer, is also made by Malyan). The source code does not seem to be available.

I also managed to find an old computer with an unactivated version of Windows which even though it wasn't activated, allowed me to tell the printer what my Hotspot's SSID and password is. So I can now point any web browser at the internal IP address allocated to the printer and do things like heat up the bed and extruder, move the axes and monitor a running print job without having to physically connect a computer to it!

Looking at the source code of the web interface page, it won't work unless you have an Internet connection as it loads lots of Javascript from Cloudflare, an image from mpselectmini.com and the actual Javascript that runs the page from malyansys.com. That's a little disappointing to be honest. I'd much rather the controller board had the code for the web page onboard and didn't need to reach out to the Internet at large to run. If your Internet is down, or if any of the expected links are dead, it won't work. It's also a security risk, although I haven't run Wireshark to see exactly what it might send to who or if it opens any other 'interesting' connections.

EDIT: It turns out that the web interface can be completely replaced if you want to. The version that's installed was written by a user for the MP Select Mini, so I've no worries about security and if any of the Javascript it relies on goes missing, it's not a big deal as you can simply upload a new interface. Nice!

A little more digging reveals that it might be possible to completely avoid the Windows only program to configure the printer's WiFi access!

If you connect via Repetier Host and go to the "Manual Control" tab, there's an input box where you can send G-code commands to the printer.

Send:

M550 YourSSID

and

M551 YourPassword

Will configure the WiFi module. Sending M552 will report the IP address that the printer has been assigned.

unseen im happy that you got it first now ill have a person to bother with gazzilion of stupid questions... mine is in honkkong as we speak

aand i see you selected the only right model - blue

If there's a limited edition, you just have to get it!

It's pretty simple to get ready for the first print. Will you be using Windoze, Mac or Linux? If it's Windoze, I can't help you with driver problems and if it's Mac, you're also on your own for getting Repetier Host installed and talking to the printer.

Hopefully, you have some filament on order. The printer comes with a very small amount of PLA, but it's no more than you need to check that the printer works.

ill get some pla tomorrow locally, i presume pla is best way to start without the fumes of abs around

(17-May-2017, 07:00 PM)Grisha0 Wrote: ill get some pla tomorrow locally, i presume pla is best way to start without the fumes of abs around

ABS fumes aren't that bad - I mean: you don't stand over the printer inhaling the fumes like a glue-head or anything.  And they are not that obnoxious of a smell.  I print most of myself with ABS a I'm fine just...

scotty lets see on what forum you landed... i might be lost, but i'd like to give my kids a chance to choose their own drugs

that is why ill start with PLA.

and an annegdote from past 30 minutes:
Me: Hon, what colour of the filament do you want me to get?
Wife: how did you call me? and what is that?
Me: The cartridge for the 3d printer it will make stuff.
Wife: do you think that after you will allow me to select the colour ill be ok to put that thing in the room?
Me: well, yes
Wife: get the turquoise one...

and she left the room...
i was like what the hell is turquoise (blue/greenish)... and then i've heard the demonic laughter from the other room ... yes it was my wife...

PLA is the easiest filament to print with and is a good choice for your first steps.

I got my PETG filament yesterday, but I'm still having some fun getting it to print as well as I'd like...

(17-May-2017, 07:12 PM)sloscotty Wrote: ... I print most of myself with ABS a I'm fine just...

You're made of ABS?

This explains a lot!

ok mine arrived today... and boy what a day it was.. i've received it around 10 am... and could stare at it till 21... first work then family dinner... but afterwards world is my oyster

first thing... mine had "something shaking inside" after inspection i found it is one of the motor screws... after trying to put it in place from strange angles... i've taken the cover off... well that's it for oob no workneeded...

then i've played with the printer... manual wasn't on the sd card, wifi drivers weren't on the sd card... yet... all is good all is configured...
then the bed leveling... maaaaaaan i took ages (and i think i need to redo it again)
(one remark on the configuration there is info on Y axis "MAX" i didn't have that, i found it the hard way that i need to set it up to 100)

afterwards putting in the filament... first time didn't succeed as the filament didn't fit into the nozzle, second time was good and then i've seen the nice red comming out of the nozzle

provided test print objects had over 3h of print time... sooo NO, i've opened thingiverse and found first random object which came to be a creper from minecraft... 45 m fine ill wait ...

well then started that i've got no idea about the printing 2/3 or even 3/4 of bed has good adhesion on 1/4 it failed (my guess bed was not leveled correctly, will play with that tomorrow)

overall, all screws in place, filament is flowing haven't succeded at printing anything yet, and im proud of my failure - i've learned a lot today

and a dumb question at the end... how to tell the printer that im done and it can move back to the "storage" position ? (go up and center the bed, so it will not stick out of the base?), i've seen option to home but it goes to 0,0,0. today i've disabled the heatbed and nozzle, waited as it cooled off and powered it down. use the home parameters, X=50,Y=100,Z=300 and you are good to go

one question thou, first +-5 MM of layers are great at consistency later on it is getting worse what could be the issue (too low temp? too small amout of filament pushed?)

few pics will be here in a moment

So, the journey begins!

Well done for getting as far as you have. Mine didn't have any loose screws, but maybe I should take it apart and check that kind of thing before it happens. I've a feeling that some of those screws might need some blue thread lock on them...

Looking at your picures, I assume that the first picture shows the bottom of the object and the last picture is the top?

If so, I'd agree that you seem to be getting some under-extrusion there which could either be caused by too low temperature or trying to print faster than the temperature allows. What's your temperature setting and what temperature does the filament recommend?

If you can give me a link to the model on Thingiverse, I'll try printing it in PLA myself and see how mine turns out.

recommended is between 190-220 but... it is matter of experimenting ... what i don't understand the first layers 5mm going up, were consistent and as expected later it went to worse.

images are as you see it bottom side top,
on the side view you can see that (looking from top of image) first layers are really neat...
my temp for now was 200 "to get started with something"
ill play with +- extrusion rates

i think it doesn't make sense to print it on your printer
ill just need to experiment and fail more to know more

one thing that i found is that the first layer is not "drawing itself" i think ill need to increase the size of first layer from 0.3 to 0.4 and see what will happen


hmmm could it be that heat from the heatbed lasts only few layers and then it is too cold?

Keep on tweaking Grisha0 and you will get it but please don't forget to watch Angus and Tom
And one question, what is the slicer software
Try cura, its free and seems to work well (in case its not cura)
And to everyone else, Angus made a video of cheap 3d printer <$350 that don't suck, a greqt video