AnkerMake M5; FDM printer at 250 mm/s

[tyswid]

Reposted from General discussion as I noticed the kickstarter began yesterday the 6th.

 

 

Summary

KICKSTARTER for the AnkerMake M5. It looks like a nice 3D printer but they are claiming to get 250mm/s extrusion and up to 2,500 mm/s^2 acceleration on it (and ~70% reduction in print times).

 

To address another pain point — the need for constant supervision — Anker gave the M5 the capability to monitor print jobs with a built-in AI-powered camera

 

Speeding prints up that much while maintaining quality is astounding but I have read some comments about noise worries. Their prices are, what I think, adequate for the features it includes, (filament runout sensor, camera feed, app control). Current listed MSRP $759 (kickstarter) however you can get the the AnkerMake M5 for its super early bird price of $429. After that, you'll have to pledge at least $499 to secure a unit.

 

Quotes

Quote

Anker, a company known for its charging products, now makes 3D printers.

 

My thoughts

I'm curious of what people think about the M5 and if we might have the next big jump in 3D printing. Also, It appears that it achieves this speed by using software in a camera to map the print head (I would wager its similar SLAM principles as a roomba). A concern is the combo of Anker, soundcore, eufy, and Nebula have not made a 3d printer before, but it seems eufy has made a roomba-like so it could have some tricks up its sleeve.

 

Sources

https://www.engadget.com/ankermake-m5-3d-printer-093531738.html

https://www.ankermake.com/3dprinter-v8111

 

 

[Forbidden Wafer]

The history of crowdfunding campaings for 3d printers is pretty bad, as far as I know. But maybe I'm watching too much MakersMuse, 3D Printing Nerd and Uncle Jessy.

[poochyena]

Why kickstarter? Shouldn't they have plenty of money to fund it themselves? Their goal was $50k, they obviously have that much money to invest. Also, why is their location set to Seattle? They are a Chinese company

Well, either way, I have absolutely no need for a 3D printer, so, meh. Still just seems like a very expensive toy to me.

[tyswid]

21 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Why kickstarter? Shouldn't they have plenty of money to fund it themselves? Their goal was $50k, they obviously have that much money to invest. Also, why is their location set to Seattle? They are a Chinese company

Well, either way, I have absolutely no need for a 3D printer, so, meh. Still just seems like a very expensive toy to me.

No idea exactly. If I had to wager a guess they are all fish out of water somewhat. The kickstarter allows them to recoupe some of the cost of R&D (since they already have beta builds), get an idea of initial demand, and build hype without having to explicitly advertise.

As for Seattle it looks like they do have a seattle office https://www.anker.com/ca/careers and having it in the US could help avoid tariffs and conversion losses.

[tyswid]

1 hour ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

The history of crowdfunding campaings for 3d printers is pretty bad, as far as I know. But maybe I'm watching too much MakersMuse, 3D Printing Nerd and Uncle Jessy.

I just have the knowlege of kickstarters in general. Uncle Jessey did make a sponsored video about it and gave them his opinion on it. No review until full release tho. Personally, I am going to wait until it comes out with v2 or their claims for performance have settled.

[poochyena]

8 minutes ago, tyswid said:

As for Seattle it looks like they do have a seattle office https://www.anker.com/ca/careers and having it in the US could help avoid tariffs and conversion losses.

Ah, I was trying to find that but couldn't find any info of their office locations. At least it feels less sus now that its not just a random city they picked.

[OhioYJ]

43 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Why kickstarter? Shouldn't they have plenty of money to fund it themselves? Their goal was $50k, they obviously have that much money to invest. 

Probably just using it to gauge interest, rather than actual using it to fund anything.  

[Blademaster91]

This 3D printer seems promising as I like Anker battery banks and cables, but selling it as a kickstarter is a bit suspect.

[GhostRoadieBL]

It honestly looks a little too amazing to be that price, for $600 it's in range of a few delta printers with similar speeds (with mods)

It would be pretty unheard of to produce usable results at that speed too, I'm expecting real world speed around half or 1/3rd that for anything short of rough speed tests.

 

60-100mm/s is the industry standard for nearly every single printer, why would Anker have something the entire industry can't do? 2500mm/s2 acceleration is a joke, the amount of mass of the head moving would stretch the belts and be unusable for detail.

 

That rant out of the way, it's one of the best looking printers and double belt/double z drive should give really clean results

[tyswid]

19 minutes ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

I'm expecting real world speed around half or 1/3rd that for anything short of rough speed tests.

 

60-100mm/s is the industry standard for nearly every single printer, why would Anker have something the entire industry can't do? 

Here's to hoping it does 125mm/s speed with 50mm/s quality.

 

As for the company it's a Collab of Anker, soundcore, eufy, and Nebula. Eufy makes cameras so they might be doing camera app development, nebula might be doing the mapping with the AI cameras, as for Anker and sound core no idea, cabling and soundproofing?.

 

What they seem to be doing different is not only watching the print with cameras but tracking the print head. They might be able to track the print head in addition to using stepper Motors in order to get higher accuracy even at high speeds. Whether that pans out to 250 mm/s is to be seen in a production unit

[RejZoR]

Looks good. I got myself Creality Ender 3 V2 because it was super cheap and I thought it would be a good tool to learn 3D printing and later move to something more advanced and expensive. It's actually not bad at all once you go the hang of it and I can bear the noise, but speed is certainly an issue. Small 3D model and it required 8 hours of printing. Designed something slightly more complex and larger and it wanted 13 hours...

[GhostRoadieBL]

9 hours ago, tyswid said:

What they seem to be doing different is not only watching the print with cameras but tracking the print head.

This is the same as software control with OctoPrint and some other software, the "ai" camera tracking is even the same with unexpected path or spaghetti monster auto stop.

The only big difference I can see from the video and the design is the extra belt for the y-axis and a double screw for z-axis. Stepper motors look the same (maybe a bit beefier nema24's instead of the usual 17's)

After some unpaid reviews come out it will be more appealing

[spartaman64]

17 hours ago, poochyena said:

Why kickstarter? Shouldn't they have plenty of money to fund it themselves? Their goal was $50k, they obviously have that much money to invest. Also, why is their location set to Seattle? They are a Chinese company

Well, either way, I have absolutely no need for a 3D printer, so, meh. Still just seems like a very expensive toy to me.

 

18 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

The history of crowdfunding campaings for 3d printers is pretty bad, as far as I know. But maybe I'm watching too much MakersMuse, 3D Printing Nerd and Uncle Jessy.

they said they are going to make it whether or not they reach the kickstarter goal. the kickstarter is more for advertisement 

[tyswid]

4 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

After some unpaid reviews come out it will be more appealing

200% agree maybe the LTT lab can review the final product.

 

Quote

This is the same as software control with OctoPrint and some other software, the "ai" camera tracking is even the same with unexpected path or spaghetti monster auto stop.

I am hoping it's "smarter" than that. Instead of a simple go/stop functionality, having some tracking of the print head using the camera and feeding that info to the control board for more precise movements.

[AnonymousGuy]

Tangent: are 3D printers "there" yet?  Like...you can buy one that just works well and isn't some hodge podge of chinese bullshit software and forever waiting for "the next version"?  For me I visualize 3D printers the same as VR: not there yet and I don't want to early adopt something that is then superseded every 6 months by the next iteration.

[GhostRoadieBL]

31 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Tangent: are 3D printers "there" yet?  Like...you can buy one that just works well and isn't some hodge podge of chinese bullshit software and forever waiting for "the next version"?  For me I visualize 3D printers the same as VR: not there yet and I don't want to early adopt something that is then superseded every 6 months by the next iteration.

it's almost there.

couple printers out there which you can just load and go come to mind, the higher end Ender 7, Prusa Mk3+ (pre-built), QQ-S pro or SR all can print really cleanly with default profiles. From what I've played with so far (full Creality line-up, full FLSUN line-up, Prusa Mk2+3, Artillery Sidewinder and Snapmaker 2.0) they seem to be good to go out of the box after the usual bed leveling, z-stop check and are not very sensitive to good vs bad filament (in PLA).

 

There is still a long way to go and I've had a few conversations with other 3d printer people I know about setting up a "kiwi-co style" kit which would get people into 3d printing since none seem to exist.

It's a little mind boggling that no company has produced a kit with a filament roll, the parts needed for the build and a QR code for the printer settings and model for easier DIY printing in a fully integrated kit. You would think these kits would be standard fare for Creality or FLSUN, even a subscription box which sends filament and a model/settings code each month to keep the owner in the ecosystem. I have no idea yet how to get this off the ground but it seems like the logical next step for the industry, buy the printer and subscribe to the printing kit so you always have a new project to build or work on. Even expanding the kits into STEM with robot arms and drones makes sense (how many batman busts can you print before swapping hobbies)

 

[RejZoR]

50 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Tangent: are 3D printers "there" yet?  Like...you can buy one that just works well and isn't some hodge podge of chinese bullshit software and forever waiting for "the next version"?  For me I visualize 3D printers the same as VR: not there yet and I don't want to early adopt something that is then superseded every 6 months by the next iteration.

I disagree. I bought a very basic 3D printer and using TinkerCAD I created stuff instantly. Very technical stuff even, that was meant to fit into existing objects. And I did it all using measuring caliper that helped me transfer real world dimensions into program. Only limitation is the size of printing area and your imagination. I still think VR is overhyped BS because it's expensive, has very limited use and when you're using it it's still rubbish. 3D printing however is freaking amazing. I'm amazed how well you can print almost anything you can think of using cheap 3D printer. I can only imagine how it is with a high end beast with self leveling bed, higher precision, higher speed, larger printing area and so on.

 

I didn't think much about VR and I still don't. To a point I'm not even interested in spending ANY money on it. For 3D printing, I thought, stuff is accessible and proven tech now. Why not give it a go and learn about it and even use it to fix stuff by fabricating parts. One of rare investments for which I think it was awesome and I only started using it.

[Bananasplit_00]

I really don't belive they will deliver 250mm/s printing. That AI camera stuff sounds like hype BS too tbh. I doubt it does much of anything actually useful

[tyswid]

2 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Tangent: are 3D printers "there" yet?  Like...you can buy one that just works well and isn't some hodge podge of chinese bullshit software and forever waiting for "the next version"?  For me I visualize 3D printers the same as VR: not there yet and I don't want to early adopt something that is then superseded every 6 months by the next iteration.

Yes. there are many FDM printers out there that you can buy and have them running. I have  an Ender 3 and after some assembly it works well. I have to level it every once in a while but thats more I smack one of the leveling screws by accident than the device being out of spec. I think I updated the firmware once, I didn't see any change so personally I don't think its necessary unless you do get a new model like the ankermake m5. 

As for making things to print there are a ton of websites out there and free CAD softwares to download, design, or modify to your needs. As long as you can export to an STL format, you can run it through a free slicing software to get the Gcode to give your printer. The only thing that would prevent you is time to print and accuracy of your printer.

[TVwazhere]

The Ender 7 is already available and can theoretically do 250mm/s print speeds. Personally only just getting into 3D printing with a Da Vinci 1.0(a?) I'm probably looking at an S1/S1 pro or similar for my first "real" printer. 

[RejZoR]

42 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

The Ender 7 is already available and can theoretically do 250mm/s print speeds. Personally only just getting into 3D printing with a Da Vinci 1.0(a?) I'm probably looking at an S1/S1 pro or similar for my first "real" printer. 

My Ender 3 V2 got confused twice for unknown reasons (to me anyways) and started printing at hypersonic speeds. Like, 5x the speeds it usually prints at. And to my surprise, it was still sort of working. It was less precise and it had problems with sticking on first layers, but the thing was really going. So, I think it's possible to speed things up and still get good results. I think 50% speed up on top of stock speeds is perfectly viable, maybe even 100%. The display was showing 500 % speed when it went bonkers lol. Clearly too much.

[Imbadatnames]

 Companies really need to start marketing printers as FFF instead of FDM because there is a significant difference.

[tyswid]

On 4/13/2022 at 1:31 PM, Imbadatnames said:

 Companies really need to start marketing printers as FFF instead of FDM because there is a significant difference.

Can you elaborate the difference? Can't find anything online

[Imbadatnames]

1 hour ago, tyswid said:

Can you elaborate the difference? Can't find anything online

FDM was patented by stratasys and ran out recently. FDM involves the use of a heated chamber not just a heated bed, FFF is the same process but without a heated chamber. Significant difference is when you’re printing with materials that need a high printing temp like PEEK, Ultem and CF nylons the FFF printers struggle due to the heated bed being unable to heat the print past the first layers, let’s be charitable and say the first inch, sufficiently and you get warping and other undesirable oddity’s as you’re printing on a “cold” surface. With FDM the chamber is heated uniformly to the part is uniformly heated so you don’t get these issues.