Tronxy X1

My "baby" brother is a new professor and designing an additive manufacturing course for his students. He found a fairly affordable (price of a typical textbook) 3D printer kit called a Tronxy X1 for his students to put together and take home.

To get ready, he and I purchased our own printers and we put them together this weekend with all of the kids. This is a really great kit. The printer has tons of amazing features for something so affordable:

• Interactive screen and SD card reader design that doesn't require an attached computer while it is printing
• The controller board is obviously designed for a more advanced printer and allows for upgrades like additional fans and a heated printer bed
• Did I mention this is affordable (~$90)

The build took us about 6 hours from unboxing to cleanup (after printing). It was a great way to pass a Saturday. We had to make a few tweaks to the build but overall I was pleased. Some things included:

• My kit was missing some spacers but I was able to replace them with a couple of extra nuts. I may print out new spacers but so far it is working fine.
• The SD card only came with one simple gcode example. It was not a very impressive piece
• I could not find instructions to set up the slicer. None of the common ones such as Slic3r or Cura seemed to have TronXY X1 set up already. Turns out this wasn't too bad to fix.

Overall it was a great kit and my Nephew in particular is excited to get on thingaverise to see if he can find models to download, slice and print.