Tantillus 3d printer is now available for purchase

My pal Brad (aka Sublime) has been working hard over the last 4 months or so to fine tune his custom designed, pretty much from scratch, portable 3d printer. He’s finally able to offer it for sale via an Indiegogo campaign.

As has been mentioned numerous times on this blog, I have been helping with the prototype and am about 80% complete on my build of a wood cut version of Tantillus. My hope is to have it up and running for the Vancouver Mini MakerFaire next month.

I have to say, it’s been pretty cool to witness the process that Brad has gone through. Lots of hard work and planning has gone into this project and I’ve been on the ground floor for it all (and hopefully maybe even contributed a little bit too).

I’m looking forward to seeing Brad’s project succeed and be an excellent example of open source product development.

I invite everyone reading this to check it out if you’re interested in an awesome, portable 3d printer. You can also read more about the Tantillus on the new website Brad has set up to support it.

UPDATE: I somehow missed it yesterday but Brad has released the source files for the Tantillus printed case so if you’re daring, have about a kg of filament and a lot of time, you can take a stab at printing the case yourself!

Be warned though, it will take a lot of time! I was unsuccessful printing it in ABS on my MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, despite having enclosed it with acrylic windows to keep the heat in…it still cracked once it got higher up the print. It’s very possible a better tuned bot would be able to print it. I was able to print everything else for the Tantillus with my MakerBot (extruder, internal mounts, gantry, etc.), just not the larger side panels.