Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Make Workshop: Sparkmaker Original $250 SLA Resin 3DPrinter”.
Welcome to make workshop, where we check out tech tools and toys built from makers today we’re going to be checking out the spark maker original. This is a 250 dollar resin based 3d printer. This is not a full review of this printer you’ll have to tune in or check out the magazine for full reviews. This is more just look over and a quick thoughts on the printer. The spark maker was originally a crowd funding campaign that was successful and they have delivered an actual machine. They’Ve managed to get the cost down extremely low so that you can do some uh resin based 3d printing in your home. As for specs, we have a build area of 98 by 55 millimeters and 125 millimeters tall.
The way these work is that they have a uv led light that is masked by a lcd panel. What light makes it through the mask cures the resin? On top of that, it’s kind of a simple process you can see the results of that process are pretty impressive. Let’S compare some prints a little bit here.
We have an einstein model printed by the spark maker original lots of detail there and comparing that here to the fused filament style print. We can see that there is an incredible difference in detail and quality. Now, i’m not going to tell you what brand of printer i used for this fused filament print, it’s a decent print.
However, my printer has been used, abused and beaten, and i don’t feel like it would be fair to show this as an example of that company’s results. But this is kind of what i’ve come to expect out of used filament printers. It looks pretty good, it could have some improvements, but and a resin printer really gives you a whole new level of detail. Now it isn’t perfect.
If we look really close, we can see the voxelization, which is the result of the pixels on the lcd screen around the you know, around the nose and on the chin, but you really have to look close if you’re holding it even at an arm’s length. Here. You can’t see that stuff, which is impressive, and you can expect that from pretty much any uh resin printer one of the downsides to these printers is that, since they don’t have the strongest possible source of uv to cure the material kind of like um a laser. For example, the prints can take a while, for example, this einstein took 15 hours to print, and this one took two hours now, it’s hard to say that that’s a fair comparison. Whenever you look at the result, but whenever you’re making parts that maybe are more functional and less visual, that’s something to consider. So, let’s look at some of the features of this printer.
Now, this printer being extremely cheap, is pretty bare bones: there’s just a dial. That is also a button and it has an led inside of it that changes colors between red and green and that’s it for an interface. You don’t get an lcd or anything to tell you status of your print or to select multiple prints for this machine.
You put a single print on your card, make sure you name it the specific name. It’S looking for and hit the button and it prints and that’s it, but at 250 it’s hard to complain about such a bare bone system. Another way they’re keeping costs down is that they’re shipping it bare bones as well.
All that comes in the package is the printer. It’S power supply the instruction manual, a memory card, two allen wrenches and a container full of printing material. Some other brands you might have seen will come with other things like specialized tools for cleaning and other tools that you might need during your time with the printer for a real review. I feel like we’d have to use this for an extended amount of time to see how it holds up over time. Things could wear out on this, for example, that lcd screen going through multiple heat cycles could wear out. Luckily, they sell replacement components for this for pretty cheap.
An lcd screen for this is 15 on their website, and it looks fairly easy to work on. These printers are very simply constructed. There’S only one motor the rest is a board for the controls aboard for the led light, and then your lcd, it’s extremely simple one of the things you have to keep in mind if you’re thinking about trying out resin printing is the fact that you’re dealing with Resin resin is generally a toxic mess that you don’t want to deal with. Your prints all have to go through a process of being bathed in alcohol and scrubbed and bathed some more and then cured afterwards in a uv, led light or out under the sun to further that curing all the way in to make sure it’s completely safe to Handle, however, the results can be impressive. Let’S talk about software a little bit, this machine uses its own slicer, which is like the machine extremely bare bones. It’S only for this machine.
You have a drop down selector for what material you want to use which has their materials. I didn’t see the material that they included in the list, but i may have just done that wrong either way. I left it as the default material and it printed just fine. It’S got some nice features like being able to add and remove supports place them where you want them, but don’t expect a whole lot of other features out of it.
It’S not the fastest slicer out there, but it did get the job done and again, at 250 total for the printer it’s hard to really complain about much. There is another slicer out there that works with pretty much any sla printer i’ll, put a link to that down in the description below you may have to tweak some things and do a little bit of experimentation, but you’ll have a little bit more features at your Disposal to find out more about this specific printer go to sparkmaker3d.com you’ll find this printer, and then they even have one that’s a step up from this printer that we’ve not yet had a chance to play with be sure to subscribe to this website and click that Little notification bell so that you can know every time we release a new cool video. Do you .