My favorite 3D printing hardware!

Some hardware deserves a bit of extra appreciation. These are my picks that earn the "Tom approves" seal!

Here's the playlist of all the approved hardware reviews!

Music is Jahzzar - Seas of Mars, licensed CC-BY-SA

[eskamobob]

I have no idea if you will see this, but holy shit is the music you back this video with the smoothest shit ever. I had to listen a second time because I was just grooving along with the music the first time.

[MikeLikesMaking]

@2:40 regarding aleph "They are the company with by far the most information, design files and documentation" I disagree with this statement. The Ultimaker you can download the entire printer as a single cad file down to the nuts, wires, and bolt.

Aleph can't even seem to maintain a consistent documentation and design their printer piece meal. They aren't even religious about making sure their source files make it online. You can find the STL files for most everything, but a lot of their native FreeCAD or OpenSCAD files are missing, such as the X carriage pieces. This is true for the 5 at least, hopefully they improved on this with the 6. But they might claim open source, but actually achieving completeness in this seems to have been lost.

[protoplastik]

Smoothieboard is awesome! I've been using Smoothieboards for the past two years. My first board was a kit. It was pretty solid until the mosfet for the cooling fan burned out. One of the headers kept coming off too, but that was thanks to my crappy soldering job. My second board was a factory board. That one eventually had problems with the headers for the thermistors. Both of these boards ran for several hundred hours before exhibiting any problems. I have since replaced them with the Chinese knockoffs from SBase. These boards are built much better than the factory boards. Much more sturdy with built in cooling on the drivers. The headers are much more robust. It also has the diodes built in for the mosfets that Smoothie recommends be installed when purchased. They were plug and play with the existing firmware. That was very impressive, I thought. For about $60, these boards are a great value.

[neoncyber]

As with my Printrbot Play, I have decided that the, I3 MK2 Is going to be my next printer. That is thanks to your technical and well rounded reviews! Though I, being a bit of a hacker, would love to hear more about the hsckability of a printer on the review. This is the smallest of critiques. Keep up the great work!

[spikekent]

Great video Tom and a superb idea to introduce the Tom Approves badge. It's a great way for everyone to see, at a glance, what the best products are. I for one don't buy stuff that you don't rave about.
Spike Approves! ... I know, it ain't got the same impact as Tom Approves :-)

[disruptityourself]

Prusha teehee

Love what you said at 0:47

[SianaGearz]

I hoped you'd wear a seal t-shirt for this. Like Seal, the singer who married a German model, or seal, a cute arctic animal.

[Jinerin]

That Printrbot Play looks like the perfect demo unit for showing off 3d printing.

[mariobranco]

Very nice video, good info.
Thx for all of the hard work !
Love from Portugal

[ArthurWolf]

Waiting for it ... waiting for it ... waiting for it .... YAY ! Smoothieboard \o/

[ChristianRiesenCom]

Good video, but may I note, the music makes it sound like an infomercial when you talk about the Printerbot :)

[kuoster]

I got 3 TMC2100 because of your review video :) They're nice~

[JandCanO]

Will you review the Duet 0.8.5 board? It is very similar to a Smoothieboard, and it is the board I'm using for my first 3D printer build. I find it to be very user-friendly as you can just edit a config file on a micro-SD card, and like the Smoothieboard, it has a web interface. It has provisions for two extruders/heaters, but can support even more with an extension board.

[pooya]

That Badge is a great idea, good luck :D

[christopherwagner]

Not sure if this is addressed anywhere, but I'm trying to carry over the following settings from Skynet 1.1 alfa to Skynet 2.x, but I cannot find where these settings are in the firmware:

- Right button being the "select" button
- item increment and value increment when pressing a button
- How long between switching items of values when holding a button

Any information on this would be greatly appreciated, as I cannot seem to accept the slow v2.x and losing my right button function completely.

Cheers!

[mommykix]

Nice video! You have an awesome channel here!

[mhelvens]

Could someone explain these stepper motor drivers to me? In the video they look like tiny circuit boards, but I don't recognize any such circuitry in my Printrbot Simple Metal. Presumably its control board already has stepper drivers integrated. Does that mean I don't have the option to switch to different ones? Are there modular control boards that support (and require) them?

Also, are there universal standards for the signals expected to go in and out of these drivers? Presumably, their output must be compatible with the stepper motor's input, and their input must be compatible with the control board in some sense. If I ever build my own 3D printer from scratch, what do I have to pay attention to there?

[JulianGoesPro]

My new favourite English speaking German YouTuber :D

[Micha]

Hey Thomas, I am using Watterott Sticks with RAMPS in my delta and I really like them. I am pretty interested in the smoothieboard but it comes with integrated "old school" A4988s. Have you ever tried running the smoothie with TMC2100s ? Did you ever come across a Duet board ? It is running smoothieware and accepts polulu compatible stepper modules.

[KriProlls]

Interesting! Would be interested with the same for Filaments!