i have no idea who on here knows velleman, it's a small belgian company that makes "do it yourself" electronics kits.
they are located only a few km from where i live, and i've been building kits from them for close to 30 years now.

anyway, it seems they have come in the reprap 3D print market, and i think they can be a big help for us, since their products are mostly good thing, with a very good manual at a correct price.
they will sell this printer a 699€ tax included and that seems like a very correct price.
there are some strange things on there design, but it looks like they thought it true and that it could work good.

[www.k8200.eu]

so, what do you think?
i have no idea if it will be open hardware and so, but i think it will be since they give you the electronic diagram of everything they make.

Hm, the guys in the 3D printing subreddit don't seem to be over the moon about this one: link to the thread

Why not, everyone else is jumping on the band wagon, the velleman kits I have built use good componants and the boards are first class, I must admit i never expected velleman to jump in, but they are a respected company at least, who next?.

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Random Precision

I have seen one, it looks like they have a lot of parts just copied from RepRap... Even the gear on the hobbed bolt has holes in it, like the one I have.

they use a sanguino board, and reprap software, and even mention reprap in the description.
so i assume a lot of the guys who will build this, will also use it to the build repraps.
i see it as a very good reprap promoting tool.

velleman is well known in technical schools, so it's a great tool for schools to start with 3D.

i understand the concerns on reddit, and agree with some but still think this could be a good thing for us.

The only weird part is the Bed, it moves both X&Y. I think it's weird, it just doesn't feel good.

I am doubting to build a Rostock, so you don't have a moving bed, and what does Velleman do?

Any pro's to this?

Bed can be made lighter than carriage with NEMA17 extruder attached. So its less inertia and on shorter lever.

Quote

Bed can be made lighter than carriage with NEMA17 extruder attached. So its less inertia and on shorter lever.

It's not lighter. You need to include the mass of a set of smooth rods and and a stepper motor in your analysis because one axis rides on top of the other so they are still carrying a motor around.

True for velleman, though I meant more general case where you can overcome need to move one motor with H-bot, corexy or stewart platform desing.

It's not their design. I saw an article about it on 3Ders.org a while ago. I'm pretty sure it's a re-badged 3drag printer. Not sure if they are getting them from 3drag or putting kits together themselves but it is cool that Velleman is getting in on the action. I used to love putting electronics kits together.

crispy1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Bed can be made lighter than carriage with NEMA17
> extruder attached. So its less inertia and on
> shorter lever.
>
>
> It's not lighter. You need to include the mass of
> a set of smooth rods and and a stepper motor in
> your analysis because one axis rides on top of the
> other so they are still carrying a motor around.


and heated bed, borosilicate glass(if used) and printed part itself

and Z axis is not good.its maybe parralel to bed when printer is new, but it wil start hanging from weight. only question is when, not if..

[store.open-electronics.org]

the original is open source, so it's a cool thing from velleman to use a open source reprap thing.
they could have changed a few things and make it closed source and not mention reprap.

my biggest concern is the liability of the extruder.
the XY movement doesn't bother me that much. the part will only move a maximum 0.41 times faster then on a X move platform
the speed they claim is more than enough for me.

also, the Z axes seems to work with 4 10mm liniar's on 1 side, and 1 on the other, so i don't really see a problem for that also.
i hope that in a few year time they will be able to make a smaller 300€ version.
700€ is a good price, but i know it's not the kind of money i had when i was 16.

I see that maplins will be selling the velleman kit

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Random Precision

Interesting that the advertising talks about "cartridges" when it comes to the print material - which is the route some manufacturers are taking, presumably to maintain sales and profits. However, the Velleman K8200 appears to use standard looking reels of filament which must be a positive.
Alan

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2013 05:56AM by Alzibiff.

The dutch site now gives credit and a direct link to reprap.org
that is awesome.

as for the cartridges, i assume they just mean the reels they sell. (normal PLA and ABS)

They going be sold on Maplin so what does this mean as for diy kit status ie copywrights, what if i self sourced the parts would it be a copy even if i used genuine parts would it be a copy

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Check my rubbish blog for my prusa i3

up and running
[3dimetech.blogspot.co.uk]

The Velleman kit appears to be the same if not identical to the 3Drag [reprap.org] which is published under GPL 2.0. So I can't see any copyright issues.

My fear is (or expectation) that they will sell this to a lot of people who have no idea of how 3D-printing works, and they will buy the machine, and get warping and other problems and them we will get all new topics about warping here and new topics of how to calibrate the velleman printer

If its anything like their other kits its going to be awful! I have had about 4 electronics kits from them any none of them worked at all. Chips not flashed, bad PCBs, wrong components etc. Really really not worth it. Theres going to be a load of disappointed people about. Shame the first experience with 3D printing will be with that! But time will tell.

^^ this is strange, i've made loads of their stuff in the last 20 years, and have been very happy with it.

Its put me right off them. Shame as they have some nice looking kits but when I spend something like £30 on one I would hope it worked once made. Velleman just blamed it on me but had a electronic engineer look at it and they couldn't fix them. Theres always going to be duds but 3/3 is a bad outcome! haha

Hi,
Futura Elettronica and Open-electronics.org developped 3Drag.
Aftert that we collaborated with Velleman to get a very low price.
Now 3Drag is sold at €537.
You can find a lot of info here:
[www.open-electronics.org]

and the store
[store.open-electronics.org]

If you have some doubt.. ask me

Boris Landoni (from open-electronics.org)

Since 3 weeks I am trying to work with the k8200. Up till now I am unable to get proper results.

As an Industrial design engineering graduate I have been building and working with 3D printers (Ultimaker & many REPRAP variants), but never have my efforts been so frustrating and disappointing as working with the Velleman k8200.

Some of the issues encountered;
- bed is not flat due to insufficient rigidity of the aluminium base and the way it is fixed by four screws (they cause the bed to bulge when tightened) (bulging also caused by screw holes through heated bed being too small, they needed to be drilled to a larger diameter)
- bed gets even more dome-shaped when heated (as many others on this forum I too added a glass plate to overcome this problem)
- bed is unable to reach 60ºC at ambient room temperature (this causes insufficient adhesion and warping when working with ABS)
- in factory configuration the bed is hard to get level due to the placement (hard to reach, too little space) and length (too short) of screws
- screws (levelling and limit switches) have a tendency to loosen while the printer is in use, it is necessary to adjust and tighten them before every print
- wiring is insufficient to supply the power needed to heaters and motors and are a pain to strip and solder (I had to replace them)
- filament feed is not guaranteed (I replaced the bearing of the feeder assembly, but after many hours of experimentation (spring tension, increased motor amperage) it is still not trustworthy)
- the metal lip of the limit switches are so loosely fitted (they are able to rattle sideways) that the screw with which the axis limit is determined is able to miss the switch if not carefully positioned (this needs to be checked before every print to avoid scary collisions and the possibility to burn out the motors) especially the z axis is problematic, since the adjustment screw and the limit switch are not properly aligned
- screws with which the x and y axis limits are determined are very hard to reach for adjustments and tightening
- the supplied threaded bar that needs to function as a z axis lead screw was significantly bent (I had to replaced it with a straight one)

Like state in this forum, the design is a direct copy of the open source 3Drag design. (source: [reprap.org]) Velleman did not had to invest much in product development.

I was seduced by the sturdy looking aluminium frame and the benefit of not having to source all the components myself, but after three weeks I am having a hard time to justify my 700+ euro investment.

If you want my advice: do not buy this model. My best fused fillament 3D prints have been made (on uni) using an Ultimaker.

.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2016 03:13PM by atagunov.

I thought it was weird that the bed moves x and y as well. Still might get a k8200 and just give it a try anyway.

Velleman to Ramps conversion [www.thinkering.de]