"If you’re serious about building a 3D printer farm, Microcluster looks like an affordable and effective solution."
The Microcluster kit is the easiest way to build a fitting home for your hard working 3D printers. It is both affordable and highly modular, guaranteeing that you’ll be able to build a 3D printer enclosure that meets your needs without breaking the bank.
The Microcluster kit system transforms a commonly available shelf into a purpose built, smart enclosure system for 2-6 desktop 3D printers. The modular upgrade system makes it easy to add lights, smart wireless control, or even a photo booth setup for professional product photography.
If your current “enclosure” includes cardboard or bubblewrap, it’s time for an upgrade…
The Microcluster kit might be right for you if:
While there are lots of printer enclosures currently on the market, you’re pretty much on your own if you want to build a multiple printer enclosure system. The Microcluster makes it easy to transform a standard shelving unit into the perfect enclosure system to suit your needs.
Halfstack!
Here are just a few of the instances where the Microcluster kit could be a life saver:
Home users
With the controlled environment of the Microcluster, you can be confident that your prints will turn out perfectly every time, even if you move your printing operation to the basement or garage. Add the OctoPi kit and tie it into your home network to easily monitor your prints from any web connected device.
3D printing professionals
As anyone with multiple 3D printers knows, most "desktop" printers aren’t really desktop sized anymore once you need to run more than one at once. Even just two or three printers can fill up all available deskspace and can cause unnecessary distractions. Instead of constantly swapping out printers or crowding your work area, give your hard working printers a space of their own.
Commercial Production
Started 3D printing prototypes or production parts in-house? Focus your efforts and produce stronger, more efficient parts with the Microcluster. The different Microcluster kits allow you to easily specify and build the perfect Microcluster for your specific needs so you can focus on developing your own products.
Note: Shelving Not Included: The panel kit is designed to make it easy to enclose a common, commercially available steel shelving unit. The kits were designed around the Edasl(R) UR-245WGB 48"W x 24"L x 72"H shelf which can be found in most hardware stores or on Amazon. Other shelves of the same size should work but may need modifications to the printed parts.
Printed Part kit
Printed parts.
Photo Booth kit
Mmmmmmmm... Photo Booth Kit.
Light Kit
Octoprint Kit
Make / Model | Cost | # of Printers | Lights? | Photo Booth add-on? | Wireless control? |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Microcluster Half Stack | $249 USD | 1-2 | Optional (+$99) | Optional (+$225) | Optional(+$199) |
Microcluster Full Stack | $349 USD | 3-6 | Optional (+$99) | Optional (+$225) | Optional(+$199) |
Printed Solid Enclosure | $150-$275 USD | 1 | No | No | No |
3D Print Clean Enclosure | $1395-$1595 USD | 1 | Optional with Pro Version (+$1,300 to $1,400) | No | Optional with Pro Version (+$1,300 to $1,400) |
Full Stack with Lights
The Microcluster will be manufactured at our micro-factory in Sheridan, Colorado. All custom plastic parts will be produced in house using our own Microcluster based print farm, mainly utilizing 0.8 and 1.2mm nozzles for maximum strength, durability and throughput. We’ll do our best to share time-lapses and live streams of the process, it’s really pretty awesome! The wiring pass-throughs and mounting holes on the side panels will be die cut in house using printed jigs, and all other components are mostly commodity parts that will be purchased in bulk.
Similar to the Twoolhead campaign, the Microcluster rewards will ship from our warehouse in Sheridan, Colorado. Shipping within the US is included in the purchase price, with a premium added for international orders added to reflect the difference in cost to ship.
For this campaign, the bundles will ship via FedEx Freight; the bundles are only available for backers in the continental US.
Like our Twoolhead campaign, the Microcluster campaign is intentionally very safe. All custom parts will be produced in house using our own Microcluster based print farm, and all other parts are commonly available off the shelf from multiple vendors. There are also no minimum quantities for any of the components of the microcluster kits, so we’ll be able to ship even if the pool of early adopters is small.
That being said, there are always unexpected hurdles to get past when manufacturing a new, innovative product. We will communicate any production issues with backers and do everything we can to deliver to all backers on time.
The Colorado Printing Project is an independent design group focusing on leveraging the strengths of 3D printing for small batch production.
Prior to starting the Colorado Printing Project, I (BAM) spent four and a half years in Loveland, CO as an engineer at Aleph Objects, Inc. There, I completely fell in love with the freedom of design and low iteration cost that production printing offered.
I started the Colorado Printing Project with the mission of speeding up the development of open source production printing technology. At the end of 2017, I successfully funded and fulfilled all campaign pledges for the Twoolhead, a parallel printing accessory for the LulzBot TAZ printers.
For the production of the Twoolhead, I built up a small enclosure for my cluster of 3D printers which turned out really nicely, so I’ve decided to turn it into a kit to make it easy for others to get the benefits of an enclosed printing space. For this project I was lucky enough to have help and insight from another former LulzBotier, Patrick. Patrick has been a long-time friend and collaborator and was a beta tester for the Twoolhead, helping out with the firmware development and initial refining.