Polar 3D — 3D Printer Review - Puryear Sinflowill87

Our Verdict

This education-focused 3D printer offers a good range of features and fantabulous software for multiple users, but there are ameliorate printers for dwelling house users.

For

Fantabulous software for group employ
Easy to manage prints and users
Affordable, especially for schools

Against

No heated print bed makes it hard to utilise ABS
Primitive born modeling tools lack some cardinal features
Occasional Wi-Fi glitches

Tom's Guide Verdict

This education-focused 3D printer offers a good range of features and excellent software for multiple users, but in that location are meliorate printers for home users.

Pros

+
Excellent software for group use
+
Easy to manage prints and users
+
Affordable, particularly for schools

Cons

-
No heated print bed makes information technology hard to utilize ABS
-
Primitive built-in modeling tools lack some key features
-
Occasional Wi-Fi glitches

Aimed at the education market, the $799 Polar 3D takes an unusual approach to 3D press, with a rotating impress bed. Information technology offers a good range of features, including support for multiple types of filament and a webcam to monitor prints.

The existent high point is the software, which lets multiple users build and load 3D models, and then queue them to a printer under one person's control. Educational users get a price break: The visitor is offering the printer for $599 to schools, teachers and students.

Design

Commonly, 3D printers produce objects by moving the printhead left to right, front to back and up and down over a static, square print bed (or sometimes moving the printhead left to right and upwards and down, and the impress bed front end to back). In contrast, the Polar 3D moves the printhead up and downwards, moves the impress bed front to back and also spins the print bed around.

It sounds odd, only by combining the motions, the Polar 3D can attain every part of the big viii-inch-bore impress bed without requiring a large overhanging mechanism. That allows a pocket-sized printer to produce a sizable print book of a niggling more than 400 cubic inches (8 inches high, and 6 inches in diameter) — well-nigh double the print area of the much larger LulzBot Mini, which manages 223.2 cubic inches (six x six ten 6.2 inches).

The lack of a heated print bed means that you accept to use different methods to get the print to stick.

The Polar 3D has a simple look; it's composed of a black-painted "50"-shaped metallic frame. The printhead protrudes from the up arm of this "L," driven up and downwards by a motor in the base of operations. A roll of plastic filament fits onto a hook on the back of the arm, with the filament plumbing equipment through a guide loop in the summit and into the printhead.

The printhead is not covered, so y'all'll need to use some caution — you could easily burn your fingers on the exposed hot end from which the melted filament extrudes. The circular print bed sits on the bottom arm of the "50," with another motor in the base pushing it forward and astern. Additionally, a third motor underneath the print bed spins it effectually.

The print bed is made of mirrored drinking glass. Information technology isn't heated; instead, the printer comes with a canister of pilus spray (Aqua Net Actress Super Hold brand) that you spray onto the print bed to make the plastic stick to the glass surface during press.

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You'll find a photographic camera just under the print head, which is an unusual placement for 3D printers. This provides a live view of the print on the print bed, to see how well information technology'southward progressing.

The back of the Fifty features a power port, Ethernet port and two USB ports (one input, one output). The Ethernet port is the primary method of connecting to the Internet, simply the Polar 3D includes 802.11b/g wireless capabilities. When we tried to ready the printer to automatically join an existing wireless network, it often failed to practise so, creating its ain wireless network instead. This is the default mode of the Polar 3D, and then to get it onto our existing test network, we had to connect to information technology with another device and reset it from the Web interface.

Print Materials: Wide Range, But No Heated Bed

The Polar 3D comes with a roll of ane.75-mm PLA filament, but the printer supports other materials too. Withal, the lack of a heated impress bed ways that you take to use different methods to become the impress to stick.

With the included PLA, a quick spray of the included hair spray makes the drinking glass build plate mucilaginous plenty that the PLA sticks to it. However, this won't work with ABS, the other unremarkably used print cloth. Instead, Polar 3D recommends the use of Elmer'southward 10-treme Glue Stick, which is basically h2o-soluble superglue. Afterwards the printing model, you use water to remove the glue and lift the print off the print base.

Nosotros tried this method when press in ABS, spreading a thin layer of the glue before press — and it works, though removing the prints is rather awkward. With a heated impress bed, ABS prints usually pop right off or require only a flake of prying to lift. Here, we did need to do quite all-encompassing soaking to get a print with a large base (like our Thinker model) to lift off.

Print Speed: Midrange

The Polar 3D is a fairly fast printer, with our Thinker model taking nigh 5 hours and 19 minutes to impress with the Draft quality setting, which has a default layer height of 0.32 mm. Irresolute this to the Medium quality setting (which had a layer height of 0.ii mm) upped the print time to 6 hours and 51 minutes. Those are the only two quality presets offered by this printer.

The press times put the Polar 3D in the middle of the 3D printer pack for speed, comparable to both the more expensive Taz Mini, which took about five hours and 13 minutes for a similar impress, and the similarly priced XYZ da Vinci 1.0 (5 hours and 9 minutes).

Interface: Controlled Through the Cloud

In addition to its rotating print bed, the Polar 3D is different from other 3D printers in how you control information technology. Rather than controlling the printer straight or through a plan running on a PC, y'all run the Polar 3D via the Web, with a cloud interface that puts all of the features of the printer online. This ties in with the educational approach of the Polar 3D, as it allows a teacher to ready and command the printer, deciding which models are printed and in which social club. These users (called managers) tin also add, remove or alter models and printers, and then a group of students can upload models and schedule prints, with the administrator overseeing the process and intervening as required.

This online approach too covers the creation of models. A basic Web-based modeling program comes with the 3D Polar and can create models from scratch using simple modeling tools. You lot tin likewise utilise the modeling program to upload and edit other files in .STL format. Either manner, models can be scaled, rotated and prepared for printing.

While this approach is acceptable for basic utilize, the Polar 3D is missing some features. For example, in that location'southward no style to scale a model to a particular size or to see the specific dimensions of a model. You're presented with a 3D view of the model on the build plate, but no specific measurements.

Once the model has been loaded or created, it can be saved (again to the deject), shared or sent to a printer for printing. You can scale a model hither, but again, y'all can't set up a specific size; y'all have to look at the size and then calculate the scaling yourself.

You run the Polar 3D via the Web, with a cloud interface that puts all of the features of the printer online. This ties in with the educational approach of the Polar 3D, as information technology allows a teacher to gear up and control the printer.

Polar 3D'south online approach mostly works well. It is easy to navigate and edit models, and create and share them. Just it becomes a little disruptive when yous are looking at a saved model, and information technology isn't clear what, exactly, the buttons marked Edit and Open practise. Edit opens the information for the model (who created it and when), while Open, somewhat confusingly, loads the model for more detailed editing in the congenital-in 3D modeler.

This interface besides hides many of the features that other programs offer. Most of the technical settings that you customize for different press materials (such as the layer height, the speed at which the printhead moves and so on) are kept out of sight. These are bachelor by opening the model and selecting Cura Settings, although this process isn't really covered much in the documentation.

Print Process: Straightforward

To print with the Polar 3D, you lot starting time load the model to the cloud service, saving it for future printing. Then, you open the model and select Load To Printer. The system and so gives you the option of which printer to employ if yous have more than one. From at that place, y'all become to the printer in the Printers tab, and hit Start Print.

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The printer screen shows the basic data on the printer and the progress of the impress, including the fourth dimension remaining, the printhead temperature and the amount of filament remaining. At that place is also a live view of the impress in progress. It isn't necessary to stay on this Web page; the printer will happily keep printing if you lot turn off the computer and walk away. This folio too works on portable devices; we had no problem loading and starting prints from an iPad and an Android phone.

Impress Quality: Good, Merely Some Issues

We constitute that the Polar 3D generally produced high-quality prints with good levels of item and smooth, natural curves. Yet, it struggled with one of our test models, and prints did require some cleaning upwards to remove odd whiskers of print cloth.

Our first exam model was a scan of Auguste Rodin'due south "The Thinker" statue. We print this model (which is created from a scan of the original) at a height of about four.5 inches. The Polar 3D had no major issues with this, producing a print that accurately captured the smooth curves and fine details of the original, especially around the shoulders and head. The levels of the print were fairly visible, and we did see some whiskers of the print material from where the printer had shifted the printhead between parts of the print, dragging a pocket-sized whisker of material with it. These are easily removed, but they exercise leave some traces on the impress that require trimming.

Next, we tried a set of gears that can be assembled into a planetary gears set. The Polar 3D did a decent chore here, merely again, some of the parts had to be trimmed with a knife to fit together. In particular, we found that the minor holes in the gears that fit over pegs on other parts were overfilled with material, caused by the fabric slumping and spreading slightly equally the impress was formed.

Finally, we tried a 3D model of a modern sculpture that has lots of hard-to-print angles and edges. We were not able to get this model to print on the Polar 3D using the default settings, equally the slicer — the programme that converts the 3D model into layers that are printed one by one — created bereft back up for the model to stick to the print bed. Later on some testing, we were able to create a impress past using the advanced settings to build a raft, a layer of plastic underneath the model that supported it while press. But that's a weakness of the Polar 3D: Its hairspray method for getting models to stick does non work very well for pocket-size areas, and so yous need to brand sure that there is sufficient area on the print bed to continue it held down.

Lesser Line

The Polar 3D is designed for educational users, and it excels in that expanse. The combination of fantabulous, deject-based software for creating and managing 3D models and the printer itself makes it easy for a large group of users to build models and accept them printed on one or a number of these printers. It is less suited for other users, though; these features are overkill for home users.

Although the Polar 3D is well priced, at $799, and can produce good-quality prints, the lack of a heated print bed makes the apply of materials like ABS more complicated. If you are happy to stick to PLA or don't listen messing effectually with glue sticks and the like, the Polar 3D can work. Just those who desire to experiment more with other print materials will be better off spending a bit more on a printer that can handle them, like the LulzBot Mini.

Richard Baguley has been working as a technology writer and announcer since 1993. As well as contributing to Tom's Guide, he writes for Cnet, T3, Wired and many other publications.