Quiet and capable, the Felix is a true DIY printer – bring your toolbox and your patience.
GUILLAUME FELIKSDAL WAS THRILLED WHEN HE BOUGHT HIS FIRST 3D PRINTER KIT. Finally he could prototype parts for his humanoid walking robot! But he became frustrated by the days-long process of building and calibrating it. Like a punk rocker inspired to play by seeing the Sex Pistols or the Ramones, Feliksdal told himself, “I could do that. I could do better!”
2013 MAKE Ultimate Guide To 3D Printing
- 3D Printers Buyer's Guide — 15 Reviewed
- Getting Started in 3D
- Learn the Software Toolchain
- 3D Design for Beginners
- 3D Printing without a Printer
Just Released! 2014 MAKE Ultimate Guide To 3D Printing
- Primo Features Extremely quite, large build volume, fine Z resolution, rigid aluminum frame, good retraction for near-string less builds
- Print volume 10.2″×7.8″×7.8″
- Print speed 150mm/sec
- Print material PLA
- Resolution (z-axis) 0.05mm-0.35mm
- Machine software Repetier
- Slicing software Repetier
- OS supported Windows only
- Open Source No
- Price as tested $1,165 kit
- Pedigree Original
- Print without PC? No
8 thoughts on “Felix 1.0”
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I own a Felix printer since last spring. I also got a fabbster (was surprised that it wasn’t in your review given their marketing clout) and a 3 year-old Rapman. Firstly, congrats to your review. It’s a monster task to get this mostly right and you did. My first critique is that you should have included your criteria in the printed magazine (btw. I didn’t find these on the website but then I may be tired). My second is that the Felix and like some others too may have done better with better slicer settings. I find figuring out good slicer setting for a given type of model an absolute pain and it takes me weeks before I get something that is sort of satisfactory…
Now just a few remarks.
* Can’t compare print quality since I only got another printer in this class. However, I don’t like the shipped “normal style” you used too much. It goes too fast on the 1st layer and on bridges. I do with reduced speed. In addition, I use “skin” (aka half-layers), that gives prettier results to 0.25mm prints. Btw. you also could use Slic3r that is included or any other. Felix uses standard g-code.
* I think that reliability mainly means being able to do longer unsupervised printing (like 10 to 20h prints). The printer sits in my office. After the first 5 layers are ok, I go home and come back in the morning and the print is there. Therefore I would give it 4/5 (1pt taken off, because a print should detect extruder jams and then go pause and send a mail. I am serious about that)
* I’d give it 4/5 for the setup if you buy it assembled (yes you can, it costs 400 extra euros ). Mine worked out of the box. Only thing I had to do was filling in some forms in repetier host and raise the print bed by 0.01mm and I take 1pt away for that.
* Don’t know what you mean be hardware user interface. I think that Repetier Host is fine enough although there could be improvements, like being able to dynamically scale extrusion rate)
* New critera: Transport. I’d give it 4/5. It’s very light and has a handle. My Rapman would get 0/5 since it the geometry is gone after moving it. No way I would want to carry some of the other printers.
* With respect to extruder jams. I had them too and three kinds: (1) 2mm filament won’t pass (and some PLA rolls are as bad as that) and accounts for 90%, (2) ends of 30mm Rolls add some tension if the roll sits on top as in my case and this may slow down intake, (3) in one case the nut of the hotend became loose and then it was misaligned. Inserting/removing the hotend is an awful pain, but has been fixed in an upgrade.
* Hackability: 4/5. That may surprise since the Felix is closed source. However, the software and the board is opensource and adding stuff to the aluminum frame is easy. I don’t care since frankly I rather don’t like DYI, but other’s did fun stuff like adding a dual extruder.
For my credentials:
http://www.thingiverse.com/danielkschneider
I have low technical skills but I can print some stuff that is much harder than it looks, e.g. 16×16 lego plates are a bitch.
First of all I would like to congratulate you and thank you for the guide into 3D printing.
I bought my Felix 1.0 printer early this year and have upgraded it steadily from the 1.0B (release version) to the 1.0E version and now 1.5 version – not because it was needed but because I love to tinker with the printer.
My experiences have been very positive although the learning curve with 3D printers is steep and I have struggled with bad PLA filament, a bad stepper driver etc along the way.
Although the printer is technically a closed source printer we have a community that contributes with ideas and designs and the printer has gotten better and better through the year as a result of that with both official upgrades and unofficial hacks and upgrades contributed by the community. Guillaume was also a great resource for me when I wanted to design/build a dual extruder for my printer.
After having read your reviews I’m a little puzzled about the info provided and the results/scores. I know I’m partial and I see that it is pretty much impossible to get all the test results for the different printers properly “calibrated” but I feel some of the scores are too low :)
Why is only Windows listed as supported? Felix uses a standard RAMPS 1.4 with Marlin firmware and I have My Mac hooked up to it.
Why did it only get a 1 on the Hardware User Interface? What where the criteria for this? from my understanding/interpretation I would have given it a 3/5.
I can not see a correlation between the print speed stated in the fact box and the 3/5 rewarded for speed. Where you not able to reach that speed or did you have other criteria?
Why only 3/5 for reliability? Is it because of the bed calibration you mention (which I don’t need to do – my printer is very forgiving about the abuse I put it through) or something else? I would easily have given it a 4/5 :)
I also wonder if you where not able to properly set up your printer? That would explain the low scores for print quality and support/overhang. Felix is much more capable than your results would suggest and it is not that hard to achieve (or I have been very lucky).
I printed the test objects a while ago on my printer with a 1.0E setup when it was really badly calibrated (I was in the middle of preparing the upgrade to my dual extruder setup) and I had no problems printing the torture test. Photos can be found in the “High quality prints” thread on the Felixprinters.com forum.
Hello, thanks for your Reply on the article, I planning to buy a Felix 1.5 printer.
I read you installed a duel extruder ? Could you share something more about that,
how did you do that, what about the software does it needs adjusting for that ?
Hope to hear from you
Grtz
PS Sorry for my bad english, I speak dutch.
Hi Doebi. Thank you for your interest.
I designed and printed a dual extruder solution for my Felix printer (I’m not the only one who has done that). You can read about it on the Felix forums; http://www.felixprinters.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=70
In addition to the hardware modifications, a few firmware adjustments are needed and I have used Cura for the slicing of objects and Repetier Host for printing.