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3D printing technology has moved out of its infancy and on to the toddler years. There is a healthy mixture of printers available on the market that consist of a parts list you pull together yourself and build, build-it yourself kits that come with most of the parts, and commercially available machines. As a Maker myself, there is some appeal to the kits and build it yourself options but in all honesty, I look at a 3D printer as a tool in my workshop and prefer the idea of something that just works out of the box similar to any inkjet printer I may purchase. The folks at Afinia recently provided their H-Series printer for me to review and, to be perfectly honest, I am nothing short of completely impressed.
First and foremost, the out of the box experience. The Afinia printer comes almost ready to go out of the box. All the user needs to do is remove a couple shipping clips and attach the filament spool arm. This done in a matter of minutes and the printer is plugged in with the included USB cable and power cable quickly and easily. The printer fits well on our desk right next to our HP inkjet. Installing the software from the included CD is also a breeze. Within less than an hour the printer is powered, connected to the computer, the software is installed, and I was ready to get the printer calibrated.
The included quick set-up guide is very clear on the calibration and configuration process. I checked the build platform and found it to be level directly from Afinia. If you find it not level, this is fixed with three easy to access bolts beneath the build platform. Part of this setup is also calibrating the maximum platform height. This is a quick process to check and set per the guide. I had to make a minimal adjustment. Again, the printer was about as ready to go out of the box as one could expect. The H-Series comes with a spool of ABS filament and loading it into the printer is as easy as mounting the spool, selecting an option in the software, and feeding the start of the filament into the machine. The Afinia H-Series uses 1.75 mm filament and can operate with either ABS or PLA material. Afinia sells ABS filament on their website but any ABS or PLA filament at 1.75 mm should work. The filament that Afinia sent along has worked very well and provided great results. The printer had a resolution of 0.2 mm when the box came but now a software update brings that resolution to 0.15 mm.
My next step was to find something to print on Thingiverse. I downloaded an STL model file of a Portal Companion Cube by Thingiverse user Poh, preheated the build platform since I am printing with ABS, accepted the default printing options, and clicked print. The software provided information on how long the print would take and an estimate of how much filament would be used as it started to print. After a few minutes to preheat the nozzle, the printer went to work. I sat back and was mesmerized by the print process. It is really amazing to me, still, to watch something print. Total time from bringing the box to the desk to something printing was less than 2 hours. I should add here that I had no previous experience with a 3D printer. I had seen some printing at the Bay Area Maker Faire and at the US Science & Engineering Fest but had never set one up, loaded a file, or done any other part of the process myself. I was familiar with the idea of plastic filament additive printing but that was the extent of my knowledge.
After a couple hours, the Companion Cube was done. I used the tools included in the box with an Afinia H-Series to remove the print from the build platform, remove some support material that had been printed to aid in the build, and I had a perfect little copy of a Companion Cube for my son.
Reading up some more on the process for 3D printing, I learned that, normally, you take your model through machining software and slicing software as part of the process to get to a print. I didn't need to worry about any of that with the Afinia printer. I simply fed the software an STL file and the software took care of the rest. While this is a positive to me, this may be seen as a negative to some. The Afinia printer is not the printer for someone that wants to open the guts of the printer and recompile the build software with their own tweaks. It is, however, a great printer if you want it to just work out of the box so you can get to your own brand of Making. As a matter of fact, it is so good at just working that it recently won three awards in the Make Magazine 3D printer showdown. It won the awards for Easiest to Use, Easiest to Setup, and, most importantly, Best Overall Experience. So it isn't just GeekDad that loves this printer.
Some have noted the similarity to the UP printer. At the core, the printers are the same, however, the engineers at Afinia took the extra steps to make some board level improvements to the electronics, re-packaging to bring the printer closer to that out-of-the-box experience, improved documentation, updates to the software, and FCC certification. Definite improvements that factor in to the ease of use and accessibility of the Afinia H-Series 3D printer.
Down the road, Afinia is looking into a bigger build platform at a higher price point but that is for the future. Right now the Afinia H-Series 3D printer is priced at $1,499.00 with filament and all of the tools you need to get up and printing quickly and easily. Have an Amazon Gift Card? The printer is available through Amazon as well
