MaherSoft 3D Prints Marble Machine with Indie Desktop, Soon to Launch on Indiegogo

In June, we showed you just what MaherSoft’s soon-to-be-released Indie Desktop dual nozzle printer was capable of: they completed a 3D printed scale model of a 115-meter-long trailer for a leading transport services company. The model was a little over four feet long, and the body of the trailer had to be printed in 14 difference pieces. The smaller pieces of the model, including the wheels, base, and lever, required an additional 120 printed parts. MaherSoft stepped up to the challenge, and delivered a great model. But if that didn’t convince you that the Indie Desktop is one to watch, then maybe this will: the company’s newest creation using their Indie Desktop is a 3D printed marble machine!

The marble machine, which reminds me of those huge marble maze building sets I used to play with when I was a kid, was 3D printed on the Indie Desktop. It was designed using Onshape, a full-cloud 3D CAD system that lets everyone on a design team work together simultaneously using a web browser, phone, or tablet. The marble machine works on a camshaft mechanism. It took the Indie Desktop printer over 100 hours to print the 34 parts of the machine, and just 20 minutes to assemble it!

The Mumbai-based 3D printer manufacturer will be launching the Indie Desktop on popular crowdfunding site Indiegogo (say that three times fast!) in the next month. The company is also currently taking sign-ups for early bird access to Indie Desktop, which will be available for 50% off the actual price. So if you sign up now, you’ll only pay $549!

MaherSoft was established as a company in in 2014, and rolled out the Indie Desktop’s precursor, the industrial-grade Indie 3D printer, just a year later. They followed up with “Max,” their first desktop 3D printer, at the 3D Printing World Expo in October of 2015. 

Here are some of the features of the Indie Desktop:

• Enclosed heated chamber and bed, which allows you to print large parts with very limited warping and cracking
• A large print bed size of 8 x 8 x 7.5 inches
• Enclosed filament storage; you can also monitor your filament motion and trigger a ‘pause’ signal to the printer before your parts are ruined
• LCD display
• Plug and play with pre-installed extruder
• Uses open source software Cura
• Optional Wi-Fi module, so you can 3D print your designs with a Raspberry Pi and OctoPrint
• Low cost; by using composite materials, injection molded parts, and a thermoformed ABS chassis, the printer’s manufacturing cost is low

The 3D printed marble machine model was released under an open-source license and is available for download on Thingiverse. So feel free to download, modify, and play with marbles to your heart’s content!

From creating great new printers to making 3D printed parts for drones, MaherSoft isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Take a look at the video below to see their awesome marble machine in action! Discuss in the MaherSoft forum at 3DPB.com.