AstroPrint - Wireless 3D printing. Kickstarter is Live and 215% funded - so far

[DTaylor]

Hi All,
We will be launching our Kickstarter in a few days and I would love to answer any questions that the EEV community has about it!

We have taken a pcDuinoV2 (or a pcDuino3S) board and put our own open source software on it and wrapped it in a laser cut acrylic case.

This box (we call it the AstroBox) wirelessly controls 3D printers straight from a phone or tablet.

Our software is a heavily modified fork of Octoprint which then connects to our cloud slicing platform.

If you want to stay up on updates, or to know the moment we go live on the 20th, you can sign up for our newsletter at http://AstroPrint.com.

What do you think?

~Drew

[pipe]

When would you ever need to print something in such a hurry or in such a condition that having a wireless connection to the printer is a major selling point? Why would you want to design your 3D models on a phone? And if you don't design them on the phone, what's the benefit of first transferring it to the phone to make it possible to send it wireless to a 3D printer, compared to just printing it from the computer?

To me it just sounds like someone wanting to jump on the "Cloud" hype, sorry. If there's actually some good reasons for this, please try to convince me.

[Gallymimus]

This might be pretty nice if you didn't want a dedicated computer by the printer.

[fake-name]

This might be pretty nice if you didn't want a dedicated computer by the printer.

Except LOTS of printers already can print from a SD card.

I don't see the point either.

[DTaylor]

Hey Guys,
I forgot to sign up for response notifications or I would have responded way earlier!  Sorry about that.  First off, here is an updated link to the kickstarter:  Click here

Most of the people that have been buying on kickstarter like the convenience factor (shameless plug:  200% funded in 4 days!)  Some possible benefits could be:

• with a camera hooked up, you can check in on your print, no matter where you are.  You can also cancel the print, if necessary.
• All .STL's are stored in your account alongside each derivative gcode you have sliced from it.  You could easily print to different printers in different locations from the same account/system.  i.e. use the same account to print on your home printer as you do on your work printer.
• About designing on the phone...  People are not doing that very much right now, but it is coming.  Checkout Modio3D for a cool example.  Also, instead of designing on your phone, you could choose a design from thingiverse, or another site, then slice and print from your phone or table.  Honestly, most people will probably use tablets over phones... 
  Most of the prints we make are ones in which we've sliced them before and we're printing again.  Its actually very convenient for us to just open the phone, pick the file and hit print.
• You do not have to have your computer connected to the printer at all.  This means that once the print starts you do not have to stay connected.  If you use a desktop computer this is probably not a big deal, but if you use a laptop, this is a lifesaver.
• For beginners, our cloud slicer has intelligent suggested settings that makes printing almost 1-click.
• Also, this allows us to made the slicer settings more intelligent over time.  We are building in model analysis algorithms that will optimize settings for the best possible print.

What do you think?