Our sister site and 3D model shop Mallyable just announced a very cool new 3D model: the Sitting Robot. It’s an exclusive digital 3D model of a particularly lazy robot that is conveniently sitting to permit easy 3D printing.
If you haven’t yet heard of Mallyable, it’s our very own source for 3D models – that’s 3D models specifically designed for 3D printing. All designs are carefully engineered to be not only interesting, but also more likely to successfuly print.
[UPDATE] We successfully printed this little fellow on our BFB 3000, using a relatively coarse 0.5mm resolution and it looks pretty good! Perhaps we’ll print it again in 0.125mm resolution to get a smoother finish.
Via Mallyable
I'm surprised and humbled that you took the time to print the model and reply to my feedback, thank you.
I agree that printed, it doesn't look anywhere as disastrous as I feared – though there's some natural sagging under the head, it's not even noticeable if you're not looking for it.
I consider Mallyable to be in a middling position for people looking for models to print – they're FAR more likely to be successful than grabbing some random model from the squid, or from Google's warehouse. Thingiverse occupies both ends – many of their (uncurated of course) submissions are terrible and unprintable – but several others have been printed many times by the community with photographic documentation, collaboration and iteration, for free. It's both the best and the worst. Places like shapeways do the printing for you, instead of giving the files – useful now, but not what an increasing number of 'home 3d printers' need – the files are guaranteed printable on shapeways' machines, however.
I suspect that you're starting now on the understanding that 3d printing technology is moving so fast that by the time a curated site is utterly essential, the sheer signal-to-noise ratio on thingiverse (and others like it) will be deafening, and 3d printers will be far more reliable and what is printable will be better understood. Good luck, and I hope you get the first mover advantage.
Appreciate the feedback! You're quite right – we're in this for the long haul and what you see is only the very earliest beginning. You must start somewhere to grow larger. More models are in the works and will appear over time – stay tuned!
As for the printability of this particular robot, it is very clearly printable on a FDM machine as you can see in the new image above – and the head is very strongly attached, too. Some of our models may be more challenging to print than others and may require tweaking of your printer's gcode generation, but that's no different than any models you may come across. In fact, Mallyable's inventory (though currently small) is much more printable than most other 3D model repositories you'd encounter on the net.
I like Fabbaloo's news on 3d printing turning up in my RSS feed, but so far I can't say I'm too impressed with Mallyable or the selection of models so far. Your USP is that the collection is curated, but the models haven't been tested on any kind of printer, and only some unknown person's keen eye has declared that your models are printable.
The robot above, for example, would have several problems were it printed on a filament deposition machine (such as the Makerbot machines) – primarily the head would have the most terrible overhang where its not supported, and the neck would be a point of extreme weakness because of the layered method of laying down the strands.
I appreciate you're in this for the long haul, and the small selection and wildly variying quality of the Mallyable collection will improve in the future, but right now it is unfortunately underwhelming and not very reassuring, especially for people who might put their money down for a model that will be very hard to print accurately on some of the most popular styles of home machines.