14 DAY TRIAL // Some here may be familiar with the Printrbot LC, and other 3D printers from that company. What they might not know is that said 3D printer acted as a pretext for a 17-year-old Hawaiian high school student to make his own 3D printer.
And it wasn't exactly in a good way. Rilery Tsunoda, as the young lad is called, is known as a sort of engineering whiz and, because of that, has been called to fix repeated issues with his high school's Printrbot LC 3D printer (the printer has probably been getting on in years).
Eventually, he got called one time too many and decided that it would be easier if the West Hawaii Explorations Academy had a different 3D printer altogether.
And instead of doing the logical thing and order one, he instead spent a couple of months in fundraisers and gathering money from wherever he could.
After that, he and a team of like-minded individuals set about building his own 3D printer, or rather a new 3D printer for his school.
The result was the Tsudoshi, named after his grandfather's first name and his father's middle name.
It can build items as large as 200 x 200 x 200 millimeters / 7.87 x 7.87 x 7.87 inches and is made of stainless steel instead of plywood.
Plywood was actually the main reason why the Printrbot LC failed. It's not exactly the most stable of materials. No wonder the company launched a full-metal model.
In some way, however, it was fortunate that Printrbot didn't use metal from the beginning, because then Riley would not have felt compelled to invent his own, better printer.
That said, the Tsudoshi has a resolution of 100 microns and can use various materials, like nylon, PLA and ABS. The 3D printer can perform tabletop cutting, etching and injection moulding.
It took a lot of work though to make it. Tsunoda researched for many hours and only managed to create something viable on the seventh draft.
