That's honestly some impressive engineering. They clearly weren't thoughtless about all the cost cutting, they really put in the effort to get as close to a workable machine as they could within the budget.

Would love to see a "sleeper" rebuild, that sounds like a great project!

Bought that for my 9 year old. Added the heat bed. The extruder stepper motor broke after 2 prints. Took 3 weeks to get replacement. Still haven't repaired it but I grabbed a raspberry pi to set up octoprint on it. The 3 prints she completed turned out very well

I bought an EasyThreed from AliExpress, about $120 aussie dolalrs. It was surprisingly good (except for its slicer) and I actually made 3 times the cost back by printing custom gluestick holders for the local women's scrapbooking group members. Minimal assembly needed, just enough for a beginner to understand how the printer works and fix simple issues, which is a win as far as I'm concerned.

Engineering to make it cheap as possible is respectable. Looking at some of the cheap stuff i've ordered, a lot of them just to see how in the hell they manage to make it so cheap.. it is like looking the work of a genius. Overengineering and using the best parts.. is quite easy. Most of the work is done for you, those solutions exist already. But trying to make it cheap... requires real innovation and deep knowledge. Like here, preloading the bushings using the geometry of the whole thing: genius. There is one specific niche that is maybe the most interesting, and that is when companies buy failed batches of chips, and then repurpose them.. You can have things like... signal output pin used as a mosfet driver... because they have dug in to the schematics of the chip and found that "if we short these two pins, then that output turns into an input..".. And it can be that this part of the chip is all right in the whole batch, and now we have a lot of very cheap, almost free mosfet drivers, that are not efficient, or may heat up a bit too much... And sure, it can have 12 pins unused but who cares if it is just powering a 500mW led on a 2€ gadget.

New speed benchy category, "most inexpensive printer". I support this.

The Easythreed printers make great practical TPU printers with their direct drive. Practical or useful TPU prints like rubber feet or handles for a tool don’t typically require great looking prints. So I use mine as dedicated TPU printers.

The hollow tubes are smart, the outer shell of a hollow body (especially a round one) takes the vast majority of the load. So if you have the dimensions to spare, you can make quite a strong part very very light by making it much bigger but only including the material that contributes to the strength and not the useless interior

That hotend looks like it came straight from a 3d printing pen xD

the amount of injection molding engineering that went into this is impressive. Like the materials are totally crap, but the connection of the axis and all that is very clearly custom to this device, which I find wild.

This video was a joy to watch, because honestly everything about this tiny printer was better than I expected! I can't wait to see what you do with it in the future, it seems like a great machine for just tinkering and having fun.

Actually hollow tubular rails is sound engineering for optimum stiffness-to-mass ratio; others should do trhe same.

First thought: I saw used ender 3 printers in similar prices. Second thought: Its crazy how accessible 3D printers are because of second hand market, you barely can produce a printer in price of ok quality used printer

The fact that thing even printed a benchy that actually looks like a benchy is impressive.

It's amazing that in 2024 a toy-like printer like this actually works and prints usable parts! I'm not a 3D print enthusiast and I don't even own a 3D printer yet, but I remember 3 or 4 years ago printers 10 times the price of this would require a lot of tuning to even produce a benchie without major failures

This reminds me of my childhood. When the other kids got cool toys, my father would always research and buy the absolute cheapest alternative.

It's fascinating how cheap it is to make injection moulded plastic parts and apparently how many they (intend) to sell of these printers to turn a profit.

Actually, pretty amazing for the price. As an occasional maker of PCBs for personal use, one thing caught my attention: tactile switches can be surprisingly expensive in comparison to many of the other components. Thanks for taking the time and expense to experiment with that printer!😁

this thing is just so elegant, i can appreciate the drive to maximize (or minimize in this case) a parameter to the absolute limit, idk this thing is a work of art.

As a new viewer and non-3D printer owner, I thought the prints weren’t too bad. It would be interesting to see what improvements or extremely cheap mods could be made to it just for the fun of it!

Have fun with it! Just for the hack of it! I would absolutely watch this as entertainment and to learn stuff.

I built a proper 3d printer, a CR-10 clone, using a printer like that, the EasyThreed X1. It cost me around 130$ in 2021. It was a great way for me to get into the hobby without paying 500$ for an Ender 3, locally or internet bought (them shipping costs...).

If the filament spool was positioned on the right side of the printer, tugging on the filament would not unload the bearings, but rather would increase the load. That might make the printer more stable as it pulled filament into the extruder. Interesting machine. Thanks.

having seen other channels try this thing, the real strength is in flexible materials. It's direct drive, and you can get pretty impressive results

My main takeaway with this video is that it's apparently normal that my white PLA strings more than the other colours

Some background info on the AT32 chips: They are indeed 'STM32 clones', although it's not exactly a clone since STM doesn't have an F403A, but it has similar registers and features as STM MCU's. The AT32F403A is a 240MHz M4 MCU with some impressive specs: 1MB flash (1024KB flash + 256KB SRAM), with the first 256KB serving as zero wait stage flash at full 240MHz, and 97KB SRAM (expandable to 224KB by taking 128KB from zero wait stage flash). I've been playing around with these chips recently and I like them a lot, they cost not much, 2 bucks for 64 64-pin variant with 1MB flash.

Apparently "you get what you paid for" is the lesson here.

You could probably print some internal braces for those linear stages, as well as some gussets for the connections. A spool holder that is up a little higher with a foot for stability, and a reverse bowden mounted to the top of the z stage would probably improve this a lot.

I've started my 3dp journey on an EasyThreed X1. Genius little machine, currently in the storage, neatly packed and waiting for my son to grow old enough to start tinkering. Love the brand and their little beast machines.

I wonder if you could replace the nozzle and hack something in place that provides a steady supply of frosting, it would probably be awesome for printing out sugary items you could then color and put on cakes and such.

I bought an Easythreed X1 a couple of years back for fun. Can confirm that backlash is a problem. I managed to somewhat mitigate it with a custom Marlin firmware with backlash compensation enabled. (This was an 8 bit board.) Other than that I was generally positively surprised with it for the price.

I love the idea. A cheap $80 running 800-900mm/sec print speeds. Look forward to it

The cost engineering in these things is honestly super impressive.

You should print all plastic parts to make them stronger and stiffer. Would love to see a series on upgrading this. You could call it trash to treasure, shit to shiny or how to polish a turd. Great video. Keep up the good work.

one of your best vids lately. entertaining and informative for a wider audience. not just the hardcore super detailed printing nerds. i would have liked to see you use some high quality PLA to see where the “stink” comes from. also, i’d really would looooove a follow up to see what mods you can come up with to make it faster and more quality prints with the least amount of money spent. maybe Aliexpress mods? or an giant external aux fan?

As an introductory 'toy' for kids/teens, for parents who don't want to blow a lot of cash on something that might/might not spark interest, it seems fantastic!!! I'd totally buy it, if I had kids who watched YT vids on 3d printing and showed an interest. Seems easy enough for non-tech people to set up, and robust enough to play with for a while. Actually, even as an old woman, I'd probably shell out 72 Euros to have a play around with it as an introductory machine. I've fancied 'having a go' but I don't know if 3D printing is something I'd find a lot of use for, so again, I admire the engineering to be able to create something basically functional so cheaply.

Important note: the seller explicitly states that the usb port is only for "firmware updates". But I've been helping make a Marlin 2 custom firmware for this printer and you can just enable the usb interactions when compiling it. I still use an sd card though.

Great video as usual. I think it would be interesting how far this machine can go when using reasonable upgrades. Maybe give yourself a budget of 20-30$ and a roll of filament for printed parts and try to make it print better than a stock ender 3, which would be price comparable at this point.

That is SHOCKINGLY good. I really like the engineering with being able to use the same assembly for each axis is so smart. The hot end looks pretty smartly designed. Obviously, wouldn’t be something I ever recommend, but could be a fun project printer.

Oh I would absolutely love a special video showcasing your tweaks and upgrades to this printer. Full kipper would be awesome, along with a heated bed of some sort and if you can solve that backlash issue. Then do a serious speed benchy test!

I'm much more impressed by the fact that an Ender 3 on sale costs just a bit more than this.

I've found that a zip-tie loosely wrapped around those loose filament coils keeps them from going all wonky, and doesn't interfere with feeding at all.

I have two of the orange ones from the 2020 time period. Still work great, once you get the nozzle end figured out for clearing. Lots of little parts to print to make it better. I ended up adding a quieter and bigger print head fan...Good product experience.

I love it! Lots of comments already exist for the design. My view: probably a result of lots of iteration. Some person made a printer (probably on Kickstarter, which is infamous for "team does engineering, sends to Chinese manufacturer, within weeks, clones of the printer show up on Aliexpress before Kickstarter even finished"), then someone did work to cut the cost/parts of some element. Then someone (else) did work to cut the cost/parts of another element. Then someone... you get the point. Do that enough times and you get a functional item at dirt cheap. May not last more then a couple uses, but so long as it works 1-2 times, it probably passed any benchmark it needed to.

Heroic HR4988 are NOT Allegro driver clones, they're completely different drivers with a drop-in compatible IC pinout. They support microstep input up to 1/128, so obviously the meaning of MS straps is completely different, though they've made 1/16th mode match. They are fairly well behaved, there isn't much weirdness going on there, though funny noises are definitely an option sometimes even more so than with the Allegro.

I'd like to see the molded parts replaced with 3D printed parts that are the same design, maybe slightly more robust, but yes, putting klipper on it would be amazing

I guess one could put it on a 15mm thick MDF board and hot glue around the base of the printer adhering it to the sides and board. Then hot glue a 30°, 60°, 90° perspex set square at right angles on the back of the vertical part and board. Continue reinforcing to stiffen any other part where possible, plus use a few dabs of super glue to make more support to the planes with screws to remove wobble/flex. That could be a cheap and expedient improvement for stiffness and stability to perhaps make some minor improvement without much investment for the sake of fun experimentation.

We bought a similar priced printer ($60) from Wish a number of years ago. The MakerPi M1 Mini had 1 button and a 3 way switch for loading/unloading filament. We recently klipperized it and added a linear Z support while upgrading the motors to some Nema 14 takeoffs from the Clockwork 1 (Voron) extruder. Ridiculous? A bit, but it's a fun little PLA printer.

You can print a 720€ 3D printer with it.

Reprint all the plastic parts with an ABS/carbon filament to get more rigidity, add more screw holes for better attachment. Reprint the derlin bearings for tighter tolerances. Upgrade the cooling fan for higher air flow. That is all you really need to do to make it a bit better.

Interestingly two years ago a variant of this (not with the cool clipping together) was also available from easythreed for 72 bucks. It's probably just about the lowest they can make and ship it with any sort of profit. It had the Marlin firmware just like yours with a bunch of ports and stuff, but also a lot more room in the bottom --- I modded it to add an old car jumper battery and make it portable (for almost an hour at least). You can get an extra 5 minutes or so if you unplug the fan!

Your summation is awesome. Great video as always.

Maybe replacing those "bearings" with a new 3d printed set a little tighter than those and adding some lubricant would take a little stress from those motors and make the whole thing less wobbly

the anet a8 went for 120 bucks back in 2016. ignoring the one or two cases where it went up in flames, it was a banger deal that just worked if you didnt mess up the assembly and it printed very well. 8 years and 50 bucks cheaper you get this printer, its smaller, without heated bed, slower and not as capable. so not really a step forward in affordablity they could have made this in 2016 for the same price.

Pretty impressive,thanks for sharing! Wonder how this would wort when the injection molds were aluminium casts, the rods solid, some better gearings on the steppers and the thing screwed to the table... What i wouldlike to see is that hotend and extruder mounted on the prusa or bambulab mini.

More of this, as much as I love the high budget stuff it's amazing to see what's kicking around at the bottom end of the 3D printing market!

I have a Easytreed X1, you can run klipper on that board just fine

Man, you need to do a rigitity mod on it. And replace the hollow bars with solid ones. Man, this would be such a fun project to keep improving it piece by piece and seeing what you can do with it!

I have the x4 and it is direct drive, I use it to make awesome tpu prints. It has made stuff in pla that rivals more expensive machines. It got me my start into the foray of printing.

I recently purchased a fully assembled semi-enclosed Humbrol 3D Mini Printer from Airfix in the UK. Like this printer, the Humbrol does not have a LCD screen and does not have a heated bed. To print, you need to only have one file on the micro-SD card. For £135, the printer came with four extra 250g reels of PLA (making five in total). The printer would fit on the print bed of my Flashforge Guider 2s.

Thanks for the great video as always 💪🏼 Just one little Klugscheißerei: The D in LCD stands for display so 'LCD screen' is a bit of doppelt gemoppelt 😉

I have no idea how they can sell this thing for 72 euros and still make a profit. Thomas has impressive 3d printing skills to make this POS actually print something

With all of those cold-shoe similar mounts it seems like there would be lots of options to print stuff and attach it. I almost wish my MK3s had a standardized mount to clip stuff too.

I got a similar model by the same brand about 6 months ago for $76 shipped. Mine is red one that has a heated bed and a color touch screen! It had some some bad layer shifting that I think was due to my overtightening the belts but it sparked my interest, and now I have a nice bambu labs printer

The theme may be "as cheap as possible"! Speaking of funny: how about aluminium hockey stick axes? 😅

Sensorless homing is the future. I use it on all printers. Less points of failure and faster/cheaper assembly.

I appreciate your take on this printer plus the motion of modding the hell out of it just for fun. Great video

Thanks for you honest words. Good review.

Put a Ldo orbiter v2

"I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because they should just save up more money" man I hate this argument when talking about things that you're not sure whether you want to spend money on or not.

Thanks for the review, so my question would be as a newbie to 3D avoid this machine? ppl said get the Ender3 instead but here in UK its 3 x the price is it worth the extra? I have a spare MacBook Air a dry garage and excellent WiFi if that makes a difference. What's your advice plz. Thanks

I wouldn’t replace the motherboard yet but start with replacing the bushings with tighter ones. (I’ve made once a CNC router with home made delrin bushings) btw why don’t you print the bushings! Also, if you feel you could improve the sturdiness of some injection moulded part try and print replacements. On electrical side the weak point is obviously the motors with backlash. Try to find cheap replacements without backlash. Bottomline it would be fun to see what could have been done if they spent 10-20 euros extra.

Disappointing you start to diss the product before you even give it a chance. "Flimsy", "too little power" etc before you even know. How can you possibly give an unbiased review when you start like that. I actually get this impression that this is quite impressive despite your comments. BTW, I am an engineer, and design world leading equipment.

I have an earlier version that, in orange, i was actually suprised at how will it printed giving it being basically a sunday fun construction kit!

I bought an easytreed as a first printer and I eventually used it to print parts for a larger coreXY printer that i am using now. Great entry to 3d printing

Cheapest and favorite quickest machine I ever bought is the Monoprice IIIP 3D printer. It sits about 12x12x15 inches high and prints pretty good for my projects. I have an Ender Pro and an Ender 3 V2 as well but for quick no frills prototyping, IIIP is my go to printer. Paid maybe $90 for it back maybe 6 years ago.

I do A LOT of repeat simple prints. Saw these very cheap and considering buying 4 just to cycle prints every 12 hours. Max height says 100mm which will be tight but I think might do the job vs an ender 3 v3 at 4x the price.

totally agree! sounds like a fantastic project!!!

I'm actually working on upgraded arms to expand the build volume. This was my first printer last year and I'm almost done designing arms for 300mm rails, upgraded motors, and a larger bed

those steppers are from a ac units to be precise there are used for the one in your home for the ozzelating flap to direct the air.

Thanks for the review!!!

I bought this one about a year ago. Very impressive for my proof of concepts. Only had to adjust the bed once before the first run.

I have this and have added a skr mini V2 with Klipper and had very mixed results. It's printed at a reasonable speed and everything but the backlash was so bad that nothing came out right and unless it's changed since I tried there isn't any backlash compensation available on Klipper

Fascinating looking at a mass produced product of something that used to be super niche and expensive just 10 years ago. I remember 10 years ago getting a second-hand reprap mendel(? I think) on ebay and getting the winning bid around $300usd without any stepper motors, no hotend, no hotbed. I eventually got it "printing" but never was able to get it calibrated enough to print accurately. It felt like 3D printing was still several decades away from being mass produced. I didn't get back into 3D printing until 2021 because of that disappointing result. It may be a cheap, slow, low quality 28-watt printer but it still prints far better than my first attempt at building a 3D printer for under $500 exactly 10 years ago.

I had the k7 one. Great for learning fundamental but don't expect the high quality prints from it. Cylindrical shapes turned out to be more of a box with too much fillet. Small bed size was quite annoying but taught me well on how to effectively cut the stl file into pieces. I've learned a lot from it.

Those Artery microcontrollers are actually decent. I've worked with the AT32F421C6T7 and they are solid little ARM M4 chips. Also run at 120MHz, have 15 analog pins, over 35 i/o pins, and costs about $0.60/chip.

I got one of these years ago and its perfect for the one in a 6 month print of a thing. easy to use and gets you used to the software. i paid $97 AUD for mine. There is a trick to using this though, dont use it in a cold environment, heat the bed with a hairdryer and use a gluestick on the pad before use.

I bought two of the K7 and used them (well... their kinematics) for projects at work. They now do the job of machines that would've cost us tens of thousands of euros... so, yeah. Big fan.

You can use it . Even tinkercad works fine on it. It Works with cura 5.6. I use a metal plate with glu. I upgraded the power supply to a 24 volt 250 Watts A build a spoolholder and hang up one kilo on it. No problems. I hope they build a bigger One. Home button. Its a super thing if you put some work in it

I love the way you just went with it without being too judgy.

There's another vendor in China going for a similar concept, but with full standard motors, direct extruder, leadscrew, slot in drivers MKS mainboard with marlin source code provided, 2020 v-slots, heated double sided PEI bed, and old E3-like LCD. It's mostly held together by stamped and bent thick acrylic panels, and assembly takes about 2 hours even for super experienced users. Nowhere near as easy to set up or "elegant" as this one, but has pretty much unlimited DIY upgrade potential. Can use most parts designed for the Ender 3 series, which is A LOT. About 50 Eur shipped domestically within China, unfortunately they don't seem to be selling internationally. I bought one when I fucked up halfway through upgrading my main printer, and needed to print replacement parts. It wasn't much more expensive than printing services charge for the parts.

Thank you for a wonderful video. Those gaps in the stepper motors probably come from the fact that there is a gearbox built into the stepper motor. Guessing that the stepper motor is a: Maintex 24BYJ 5V Unipolar High Torque Mini Stepper Gear Motor, if it is correct, the gearbox has a 1/32 ratio. Just replacing the stepper motor to one without a gearbox would probably make up for the gap, but mess up the maths in the motherboard.

What a great video! Also, I loved 15:05 because I owned one of these and I had the same exact reaction when attempting to clean the nozzle lol.

It would be a great project for seeing what the included hardware is capable of. Definitely will be watching for the next episode

Hi, good video! This Artery F435 is a new chipset that is competing with the F405 in the market with great features and at a lower price point. On Drone flight controllers are starting to show this new chip. Good choice with a lower cost!

I was amazed you got it assembled and working. Getting rid of the screen is a good idea, and they are closer to essential operating steps. If you got some wood or aluminum you could hot glue some rigidity. It seems to be trying "soft, but more intelligent". It really raises "What do I want to make with this?" so "What forces and requirements are needed to do what I plan to do?". You could get to where "I want to make some of these." gives you instructions to "Print and assemble these components, snap or glue them together, use quality parts at these points - all based on intelligent planning". All based on "Precisely what do you want to make with this?" If they sold linear components that snap or glue together, and offered a range of rigidity and precision, it would suit someone who had many different things in mind. But someone wanting to be a small manufacturer (maker) more narrow requirements and possibly harder pieces at critical locations and steps. I think if you focus you mind on any one part, and use robotic arm 3D vector methods, rather than xyz linear thinking, it might give really artistic and interesting results. But it then is a very human specific instrument (like a musician's instrument or an artist's brush or sculptor's tools) to make creative things for sharing. These sorts of things could be means of expression -- if the engineering, force and material design - could be part of "What do I want to make and what tool can I print to do it best to suit my overall purpose?" I worked online for about 10 years with sculptors, artists, 3D workers and makers, and groups who wanted things made. They generally like hard tools, not soft ones; precision and ease of operation. Then the creativity is in the human "hands on" steps to make things. Maybe the whole field of 3D scanning and replication to needs to be sorted out from "designing and making originals". If you could have hand and voice controls and several automata (A "linear component" is a separate entity and obeys certain rules. Several such components, working in orchestrated concert are working toward a human design goal. I can see a full AI (LLM in there somewhere) controlled design system where a human artist and designer over time can make most anything that comes to mind. And with diffusion printing (same as diffusion video) algorithms, the AI could simply use "soft techniques" to creatively add and assemble things. Glass, wood, metal, meta-materials, pick and place computer, PCBs, coatings, acrylic, hard repeating elements glued together, hard elements welded together. It would take fairly sophisticated but "lean and efficient" thinking. But I expect that to emerge from combining LLM (needs a wrapper and rules) and machine learning. And, a much more serious "What are the essential purposes and steps in creativity and human expression?". Yes, resin and cast parts that snap or glue together and some 3D printed parts. Hard plastic rods can last as long as thin metal tubes. Casting and coating. A bit of chemistry - shared in a global collaborative "nothing lost" environment might work. Talking only and not encouraging communities is not really sustainable. Lots of pathways to explore - so tens of millions working together where everything is remembered and accessible and available. Not many unconnected pieces. If all the 3D workers in the world worked seamlessly and efficiently - that can be done with some who only facilitate and enable. A global marketplace and community, not many individuals all struggling alone. You could make a "distributed maker network" where people send you what they want to do and you print and send them the system completely assembled tested and operating. And anyone of 8 Billion humans (and AIs) can be part of that global open community. Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation

I know almost nothing about 3D printing and printers but would really like to learn. While watching this video, my thought about the wires getting in the way would be to hot glue them to the side. Then, I wondered if a bead of hot glue would keep those parts from wobbling too when the wire was feeding? But thanks for this video. This little thing kinda breaks down the science behind 3D printing rather well.

My first printer was the TronXY for 120€. I could make many good print with it. Even an entire Exii robotic arm.

I used a K1 for about 3 years, worked great till the extruder gears wore out and I bought an ender 3 V2. Now it lives as a cheap plotter for christmas cards.

more videos with this setup pleaseeeee, lets REALLY put it to the test!