Anker’s first 3D printer might be the one you’ve been waiting for

Even if you try to do it on the cheap, 3D printing can be time consuming and expensive. It feels like I have adjusted, replaced, or upgraded half of the parts on my Ender 3 Pro. It has been fun, but never easy.

What if a consumer-ready 3D printer changed that? We might be about to find out. The company that makes the Eufy smart home device, Soundcore audio, Nebula projectors, and Roav car accessories is expanding into 3D printing this year. The just-revealed M5 looks like it could give leading brands a serious run for their money.

Image: Anker

Launching later today for an early bird price of $429, the AnkerMake M5 will come standard with nifty features you often have to tack onto competing printers.

The flagship feature of the company is that it prints five times faster than the competition. I don't mean that you can set it to print really fast if you calibrate it, I mean that you can take the printer's two halves out of the box.

There is a note on crowd funding.

Companies looking for funding tend to make big promises. According to a study run by Kickstarter in 2015, 1 in 10 products that reach their funding goals fail to deliver rewards. There is disappointment in store for those products that do get done if they are delayed, missed deadlines, or overpromised.

The best defense is to use your judgement. Do the product look legit? Is the company making crazy claims? Is there a prototype? Does the company have plans to manufacture and ship finished products? Has it completed a campaign before? You are not necessarily buying a product when you back it on a site.

I don't think I can overstate how fast my Ender 3 Pro is, it is five times faster than my default speed. 3D printing can take a long time, but with a printer that lets you build parts the same size, it can be done in less than an hour.

It's not clear what secret sauce keeps your parts from getting shaken right off the printer at that speed, but it sounds like it could be a lot of things. The Y-axis build plate is being moved using a fancy stepper motor with high-subdivision drivers and two belts. The gantry is lowered on two screws instead of one. It has a textured build surface, similar to Creality's printers, which is great at keeping prints stuck to the plate. The base for the printer was die-cast aluminum. Anker claims to have advanced algorithms that align your printing with your course of action.

I want to believe when I see it.

Image: Anker

My biggest frustration with 3D printing is not speed. I am happy to let a print run out in the garage as long as I am sure it will end up complete. I'm so tempted to upgrade for a 49-point auto bed leveling system, broken filament detection, and a nifty one-button button, but I'm not sure.

I was told by Villines that 3D printers are right at the moment where they could become mainstream.

The vision here is a printer where you could download a design from the internet, send it right to the printer, and it will handle the rest for you. No need to find a slicer app to translate it into printer code, or worry about several of the other most common failure points, and when you're done, you'll have a whole timelapse video ready and waiting for you to share it on social media.

The company may not have it all figured out yet, according to its spokesman. The reason the printer is not shipping until September is because of the fact that it will be made by Anker, who has a good track record there.

3D printing enthusiasts tend to expect a return on their investment, so it's not clear how much of anecosystem the new printer will have yet. It accepts GCode, uses standard nozzles, and the company plans to offer replacement parts, but it's not yet clear what will work with other products on the market.

I want to see it in action before I buy one, but I could recommend the first 3D printer if it works well.

The expected release window for the printer is September 2022.