Wesley's Tool-Box

The designers of Makibox aimed to reduce the headaches of using a 3D printer, but it does not mean it's trouble-free. In fact, there can be some problems because you're dealing with plastics, a tangible material.

One problem I've encountered was a leaky hot-end nozzle. Specifically, it's leaking where it's not supposed to, on top of the head. When the leak grew too much, the printer tended to stop printing. The incomplete squirrels shown here are such results.


Thankfully, I had a spare hot-end, and that worked without any problems. The leaky one has been sent back for another replacement. With this problem out of the way and printing as much as I would like, I noticed another problem creeping up.

A home 3D printer has myriad of uses, but I think toy printing immediately stand out if you have children. Makibox can print in non-toxic (after printing, anyway) ABS polymer, so I set out to make a simple plastic figure for my daughters after the test prints were done.

One thing to note is that the extruder broke down a few weeks ago, so I had to send it back to Hong Kong for replacement. That's why there had been a lack of blog posts about the 3D printer since early January. I've got my replacement, and it works perfectly so far. Better than the original one, in fact.


I selected a squirrel design from Thingiverse because it didn't look to complicated, yet cute enough so that the kids would like to play with it. It turned out that I was right on both accounts. Keep reading for more pictures.