Anker has launched a Kickstarter campaign for the AnkerMake M5. Anker’s AI-Enhanced 3D Printer is both quick and easy to use.
Anker, a smartphone accessories company, has unveiled the AnkerMake M5, a 3D printer that makes some bold claims. The AnkerMake M5 will, according to Anker, give five times the speed of consumer-focused printers. It is also simple to use for beginners.
Anker Promises Blazing Fast Print Speeds
Anker has entered the 3D printing industry in order to address the issues of complexity and print speed. It promises a print speed of 250mm/s in order to meet the latter. This is the AnkerMake M5’s default performance out of the box, not the maximum speed possible, with an asterisk indicating some fine print trickery.
Most popular 3D printers are such Creality Ender-3 and Prusa i3 MK3S+, print at 50mm/s by default. Anker also claims a 2500mm/s2 acceleration figure that is higher than typical. This should allow the printer to reach its maximum print speed in real-world printing situations.
For i3-style bed-slinger printers, hitting such print speeds is a tall order, because the huge moving mass of the bed makes fast printing a difficult engineering problem. Anker appears to have accomplished this by beefing up stepper motors and accompanying drivers, as well as moving the bed with a pair of timing belts.
Record Time-Lapses and Detect Print Failures Out of the Box
The AnkerMake M5’s main selling point isn’t just its speed. In addition to AI-enhanced social printing, the company’s first 3D printer promises. It has a 1080p camera for recording time-lapse films. They can subsequently be effortlessly shared to the user’s social media accounts via Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa interfaces. The AI part stems from the use of machine learning assisted computing vision protocols to monitor the same camera for print faults.
All of these features may be fitted to any printer that uses a webcam and a Raspberry Pi running an instance of the free source OctoPrint interface. Anker, on the other hand, offers the same thing in a less daunting box that claims to be simple enough for a novice to operate.
Touted as the Accessible 3D Printer
The AnkerMake M5 comes mostly pre-assembled in a semi-knocked-down state, with the user just needing to build three sections in roughly 15 minutes. If we take Anker’s word for it, that’s a lot faster than the numerous hours it takes to assemble the ordinary consumer 3D printer.
A 7×7 mesh bed auto tramming (leveling) system, an automatic filament runout sensor, a direct drive extruder to print flexible filaments, and a hot removable magnetic build plate for ease of removal are all included in the printer.
The AnkerMake M5 Is Cheaper for Kickstarter Backers
Early backers of the AnkerMake M5 kickstarter campaign can get it for $429 in limited quantities. Once the limited discounted spaces are filled, the early supporter price will rise to $499. They expect to finish and ship the printer in September 2022, according to the business. Following that, the printer’s actual retail price is set at $759.
Kickstarter does not guarantee projects like other crowdfunded projects. It’s also not uncommon for people to lose money on unsuccessful ventures. Before you consider this crowdfunded venture, you might want to read our suggestions on how to back Kickstarter projects wisely. However, Anker is a well-known company that is most likely exploiting the platform to build marketing buzz.
Caveat Emptor
While the AnkerMaker M5 appears good on paper. We’re not certain that it can live up to Anker’s claims in practice. Thousands of individuals contributed millions of dollars to see for themselves within hours of the Kickstarter campaign being live.
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