Two months ago, Pirx3D, a 3D printer manufacturer based in Cracow, Poland, has gone open source and announced the release of the designs for their original laser-cut, wooden-framed, 3D printer model called PIRX.
A relative newcomer to the industry, the company released their first plug-and-play 3D printer, the Pirx One, just two months ago. If you didn’t see 3DPI’s intial coverage, the Pirx One features auto-bed calibration, making use of a sensor that measures the printer’s bed position in three places, with the PIRX One software calibrating to the bed in the case that any of its levels change after or during each print. The PIRX One has 210mm x 270mm x 210mm build volume, and it generally works best with any type of PLA filament.
The wooden-framed PIRX 3D printer is a bit of a throwback, with respect to it’s external design, but it also allows for easy production by anyone who’s interested in making their own. What I like about Pirx is that they acknowledge their open source roots and the RepRap community, which is often taken for granted at the current stage of the desktop 3D printing market. The desktop 3D printing industry owes a great deal to the RepRap community, and, even though their were a lot 3D printers that popped up with what was basically the same FDM technology, many did not acknowledge where they received their “inspiration” from.
Piotr Lipert, CEO of Pirx 3D added some thoughts to the announcement:
Thousands of users gave our first printer a try…thanks to their feedback, we’ve had the opportunity to learn what major challenges 3D printing posed to the users. Not only have we been able to improve existing solutions, but we have also come up with completely new features. The holy grail of the design process was to make a printer that would be as trouble-free a device as possible, and using it would be as easy as using a TV. But without a remote control.
We’re extremely happy to inform you that our first, wooden-framed model of a 3d printer goes opensource. If you want to build your own PIRX, visit our website and download all the parts you need. We’ll provide you with the videos, tutorial, manual and everything that is needed to help you build a 3d printer.
The files they released require assembling in Autodesk Inventor, and PIRX representatives have said that, in the next couple of days, they’re going to provide users with the manual, videos, tutorial, and a list of all its necessary parts. For now, if you are interested, you can get started by going to Pirx’s open source page. If you have a github ID, you can grab all of the open source files for the PIRX.
Oh yeah, the company recorded the PIRX 3D printer “playing” The Imperial March before Pytor makes his announcement, which is almost as cool as his jet-black mane. Check it out:
