News    The Project    Technology    RoboSpatium    Contribute    Subject index    Download    Responses    Games    Gadgets    Contact   




<<< Imprint         ...to be continued. >>>

3D printer Kywoo Tycoon

The video about the Kywoo Tycoon


Remarks about the Kickstarter campaign

Once you have achieved a certain popularity on YouTube, at some point you will receive inquiries about product tests from various manufacturers, mostly from the Far East, as well as from the USA (Europe and the rest of the world are still far behind). The number of inquiries grows with the number of subscribers and at some point you start to ignore most of them, unless you want to specialize purely on product tests (which at some point began to bore me). The request from Kywoo somehow triggered me to reply. It's a newly founded company that wants to bring its first 3D printer onto the market with the help of a Kickstarter campaign and the opportunity to be able to help shape the device (at least a little bit) from the beginning was really appealing to me. The first test was positive: As a supporter of the open source philosophy, I'd like to make sure that its rules are followed. This includes that the source code has to be published if changes have been made to it. My request as to whether this would also be taken into account by Kywoo was answered positively. I have been emailed a pre-release version of the firmware source code. Many manufacturers do not deal correctly with this issue, which corresponds to a violation of many open source license terms!
I received a pre-production model, recorded a test video and passed my experience about the printer. None of my comments were downplayed, as what I often experienced when I came into contact with manufacturers ("It's not that bad", "Don't be soooo German", "It's a feature, not a bug").
Then there was the thing about patents:
The development of filament printers has been open source from the very beginning and there is an agreement among printer manufacturers that no patents will be claimed for further development. Kywoo was probably not aware of this and in the preview of the video for their campaign this no go word appeared - in connection with trivialities that are not patentable anyway. I immediately pointed out that I would end my collaboration if Kywoo would claim any patents on their printer and what seemed impossible to me finally happened: This has been corrected, patents are not claimed, the campaign video has been changed. This extremely fast rethinking is hardly imaginable for companies on the continent that invented patents and also on the "round corners patents continent" and reveals a secret of the success of China as a production location, from which one can (re) learn customer orientation.
From my point of view, my contact with the manufacturer has been rated positively, let's see how things go with the Kickstarter campaign.

I am not financially involved in this campaign! I only gave feedback on the pre-production model and made clear my point of view on open source and patents.

About the printer

Kywoo Tycoon 3D printer
Figure 1:
Meine bisherigen Erfahrungen zum Kywoo Tycoon habe ich im Video aufgezeigt. Wie dort versprochen, gibt's sämtliche Fotos, die ich für das Video von dem Drucker gemacht habe, als Download package (42MB).

Sample prints

Kywoo Tycoon sample print chain link
Figure 2:
Track link robotic vehicle:
Material: PLA
Nozzle: 0.4mm
Layer height: 0.2mm
print time: 40 minutes
Dimensions: 35x35x16mm

Kywoo Tycoon sample print chassis
Figure 3:
Chassis robotic vehicle:
Material: PLA
Nozzle: 0.4mm
Layer height: 0.2mm
Print time: 20 hours
Dimensions: 163x207x41mm




<<< Imprint         ...to be continued. >>>


News    The Project    Technology    RoboSpatium    Contribute    Subject index    Archives    Download    Responses    Games    Links    Gadgets    Contact    Imprint   





Twitter YouTube Hackaday Patreon TPO