M3D — The Micro
I backed it on Kickstarter about a year ago.
The projected ship date of November came and went with no sign of completion, and one thing led to another — a full year of waiting.
It arrives in a plain cardboard box like this.
The iPhone 5 on the right is for scale — the box is so small I thought there had been a mistake.
The filament I ordered separately is below it; the spool is remarkably small and fits inside the printer.
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I briefly owned a 3D Systems Cube at one point — the spool is about half its size, and the printer itself might be about half the height too.
Out of the box, it's impressively small.
In the box: a USB cable and a power adapter. That's it. They're just dropped loose into the padding — minimal packaging ceremony.
The manual is online-only. There's one slip of paper in the box that says "Connect, Click, Print!"
Software and documentation are on the user portal.
The shipping clips used to hold the printer steady in the box were 3D-printed. Trivial detail, but the 3D model files are available on the user portal too.
Install the software, connect USB and power, and the PC recognises the printer.
…But immediately shows "The firmware on this printer is incompatible," which is alarming for a second.
Read to the end and it says "Would you like to update now?" — click OK without hesitation.
Once recognised correctly, the logo on the front lights up. Looks great.
The manual says the initial setup screen includes a filament selection option — in reality that option isn't there.
Close the dialog, then go to the "3D Ink" menu from the main window.
Filament can be loaded externally or internally.
In both cases, the tip of the official filament spool is bent from shipping — trim off the bent part before loading.
External loading first.
I accidentally photographed it with filament the same colour as the printer, so it's hard to see — but the filament is the thing sticking into the extruder (print head) in front of the thick cable.
Insert it into the hole and click the button in the software; it gets sucked in automatically.
With external loading, unwound filament from the spool tends to flop around and get in the way.
The user portal has 3D data for a spool holder; print one and hang it on the printer to keep things tidy.
Having the user print any optional accessories themselves is very on-brand for a 3D printer.
The spool holder takes over four hours to print though, so that's a project for another day.
Now for internal loading.
I couldn't see where there'd be any room in such a small enclosure — but it turns out the print bed lifts off.
The filament goes under the floor. This just raises the question: where does the control circuitry live?
Hard to make out in this photo, but there's a tube at the red circle. Feed the filament in and it goes all the way through.
Apparently the extruder's power cable is hollow, and the filament runs through the inside of it.
The filament goes from the compartment all the way to the extruder without ever appearing outside the enclosure. Ingenious.
The spool fits neatly under the floor as shown.
Third-party spools will likely be too large, so you'd need to unspool the filament and load it loose. But unlike the 3D Systems Cube, there's no DRM cartridge lock — as long as the diameter matches, any third-party filament works.
And of course, the traditional first print: Master Yoda.
I printed at half the original scale, medium quality, hollow interior — took about two hours.
The ears and hands are rough at this scale, but the curved surfaces on the back look surprisingly smooth.
Notably, the bottom is completely fused to the print bed — no calibration needed. That's impressive.
With the 3D Systems Cube, even careful calibration left gaps and caused warping mid-print.
The problem: it's so well-adhered that I had no idea how to remove it. Which led to this:
Master Yoda has fallen.
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