When I started this video I had 35 minutes of footage. And I remembered Blaise Pascal’s famous quote: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” Except I do have the time. That’s the point of editing. In the end I had to trim a lot of fat, but I managed to make an, I feel, very watchable video from the mess I gave myself.
A lot has been said about the race to the bottom and what we’re losing along the way, but I prefer to think about the gains. We invented PLA so that we can print without enclosures and without heated beds. Think about that. [Cue Keanu Reeves “Woah”] If this printer represents where the absolute bottom is right now, it’s actually super hopeful. It’s not the direction we thought we were going, but it’s not a bad direction in the end.
I think it’s fair to say the EasyThreed K7 met or exceeded all expectations I had for it. But does that make it good? It’s certainly not the best 3D printer for everyone, but EasyThreed is defiantly on the right track with the k7. Honestly, if someone were to fix the bed in place and add a bed level sensor so a first time user can print without even needing to level the bed, this might be the best first time user 3D printer.
…Oh, except for the UI. I forgot to talk about that in this video. All of EasyThreed’s 3D printers have this kind of minimalistic user interface. Like the Dagoma Neva there’s no screen, and the only real indication of it’s state is a blinking LED in the button that you use to tell it “Go”. “How do you choose which file to print”? It simply prints the most recent file on the SD card. It’s functional, but just barely and the printer would benefit greatly from even the smallest of OLED screens. Heck, add an Oled screen and one more button and you could even cycle through which prints to print. Load up the SD card so you don’t need to run out so often. Or add Wifi and make it an extension of your computer.
Dang, I think the K7 is giving me hope for the future. It’s so close to being actually good.
One segment that was cut from the video is where I 3D printed some dice which, when printed on the Selpic Star A had problems with some of the sides having less detail than others due to monumental backlash in the Y. However, that was not the case on this printer, and in the interest of time I decided to save saying “Yup, it’s better than the Selpic Star A in this way too”, especially since it proved that on the second print.
