A few days ago, an interesting company named Photon Elephant (best name of the year) announced the launch of its Kickstarter campaign. The campaign is funding Raspberry Pi-based 3D printing software and hardware that “lives directly on your 3D printer”. If you are interested in incorporating new printing features, like sensor feedback or altering your machine’s printing process, you can use Photon Elephant’s SDK to write simple scripts and alter the way your 3D printer works. This is especially helpful if you are trying to build a great 3D printer, but have run into walls using different open-source solutions. Think of the SDK as a ready-made API or operating system to design a 3D printer.
The idea behind their SDK was to createa platform simple enough for anyone to build, but powerful enough to facilitate the creation of better 3D printers. One year ago, the Photon Elephant team was interested in the notion of using a Raspberry Pi to control a 3D printer directly, rather than using Arduinoor any firmware-based components. They discovered that they were able to produce some high quality prints using the Raspberry Pi and some simple additional circuitry. Now, they are looking for crowd funding as they go through the process of transforming their prototype circuit board into a production board capable of being mass produced and distributed.
A Few Key Features of Photon Elephant:
- Easy installation process
- WiFi,
- Pause/Resume
- On-board slicing right out of the box
I think the most interesting think here is the SDK. This makes Photon Elephant an enabler of better pre-production and production efforts by entrepreneurs and engineers attempting to create better or highly personalized 3D printers on a limited budget.
CEO AvtarKhalsa made a few remarks on the current status of desktop 3D printers, saying, “3D printing today is simply not robust or reliable enough, and addressing these issues at the moment requires a coordinated firmware and hardware effort. We are excited to make this coordination easier by allowing hackers and developers alike to modify how their printer works with simple scripts in the language of their choice.”
The Photon Elephant Kickstarter has already bypassed its goal, but you can read more about the campaign over at the project’s Kickstarter page.
