Fabbster 3D printer

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The Fabbster is a low cost 3D printer kit that can be assembled by people with some do-it-yourself skills.

Important. This article refers to a "pilot program" printer and the draft manual version 1.10 and not the "final" home-user version.

More later. I just finished assembling and started testing ! At some point I will split the page, e.g. move assembly to a separate page after I am done with it. Finally, you will find gibberish and small mistakes in the text. I'll spend some time repairing these now and then ....

The fabbster kit

The fabbster is a kind of modified Mendel design that targets the home market.

Where and what

Getting it The kit is sold through retailers and costs about 1500 € (incl. VAT., e.g. here). It will be shipped sometimes soon (May 2012?). I got ours for 500 € through their (March 2012) pilot program.

Software

A basic slicer program (STL to machine code configurator/translator) from Netfabb is included in the price. The machine code is closed source and not documented, meaning that you will have to use this Netfabb program.
The printer comes with an electronic box that can print either through a connected PC or via a SD card. You also can put a file on the SD, then launch it from the PC (this is better solution for large files)
Driver software for Windows XP/VISTA/7 can be downloaded from the wiki.

Materials

Custom made ABS sticks or 3mm ABS rolls
PLA sticks or rolls

The parts

Unlike the RapMan, the fabbster is based on very few different kinds of parts:

Most of the structure uses so-called "cassettes", i.e. good for most everything 8.5x7.6cm plastic parts
Most screws and bolts have the same size.

Assembly

The assembly manual

Assembly is described in a bilingual German/English assembly handbook (Version 1.10 is a color PDF file in A4 portrait format and includes 57 pages and about 42 for the assembly process itself.
Steps are explained on sheets that included the following information:
- Parts (prepare them first)
- A graphic explaining the assembly step
- Some detail views
- A global progress view

Other documentation

Wiki
support forums

Build time depends:

On your DYI skills
On your technical reading skills
On your capacity to follow instructions (undoing is easy, but adds time)
On how well you want it to be done
On how fast (without breaks etc) you plan to work

In my opinion, it can be anything between three and thirty hours (or more if you make a lot of mistakes). It took me about 22 hours (including initial testing, wiki writing etc.). Pure assembling therefore took less. But I do count problem-solving and basic testing as "build time".

Important: Build time refers to the pilot version. The final home-user version should take much less time.

Suggestions

The manual should be improved a bit:
- some mistakes must be fixed,
- some explanations must be added,
- Insert upfront a graphic that labels the most important elements (axis, names of the motors). e.g. see this. Users must understand what they are building. Some won't ....
Some parts don't fit well: Fabbster is in the process of fixing this
1-2 parts need a redesign: Fabbster is in the process of fixing this
The testing/calibration/software installation part is currently badly documented: Fabbster will fix this too I hope :)

If I had to assemble a second one, I'd certainly do it in 4 hours but then I wouldn't. Once every two years is enough (see RapMan).

Links

Official

Fabbster Home
Fabbster forums
Fabbster wiki (Includes all the documentation). Sometimes, a wiki page just links to a file, e.g.
- assembly handbook
- drivers and software

Copyright modification

Contents of this page is available as CC-BY, meaning that commercial sites can reuse and remix text or pictures if they cite us.

In addition, Sintermask/Fabbster can copy/paste both texts and pictures associated with this article to their support sites without needing to cite us.

However, given the doubtful quality of the pictures made with a cell phone, I doubt that anyone would like these ;)

- Daniel K. Schneider 22:08, 25 April 2012 (CEST)