Interview: Paulo Blank – Minibot Project – Brazil Projects

Hi guys! =D

Most you may know that I’m from Brazil. And we do have a great market of national products for 3DPrinting, but like others, the Chinese market obfuscates the small ones like ours.

And I started a campaign that I want to show to the world, all the good stuff that we produce here, besides our bad politicians.

This is the first of a series that I’ll try to keep writing about the Brazilian market for this hobby that we love.

The first interview is with Paulo Blank, from the Minibot project:

First, let’s go technical:

• PLA
• PETG
• ABS
• Flex

Q:  How the Minibot project started?

A: The idea came inspired by the Tinyboy project, in February of 2016. I was amused by the picture of Taiwanese kids assembling Tinyboys at school, I wondered it could be feasible in Brazil. But the Tinyboy printer was too small and simple, so I decided to make a much better design with standard RepRap parts like Nema17 steppers and Arduino Mega +Ramps board, and finally a better build volume to reach other markets.

Q: As you mentioned, the project was inspired on the OpenSource of the Tinyboy, How that worked?

Q: What are the challenges of fabrication in Brazil?

Q: I heard that the fabrication of this printer, is all crafted, how it works?

Q: The Minibot has an astonishing quality of print, how did you achieve that?

I started in 3D printing in 2012 with a Canadian Prusa-Mendel kit, called Ecksbot. By that time I was impressed by the quality of a homemade machine. Engineers are never satisfied enough, so since that time I work looking for continuous improvements. When I migrated from 2.85mm filaments to 1.75 I was amused by the benefits in quality and reliability. In 2015 I designed a portable 3DP called ‘Maletabot’, assembled one prototyped with very technical success, perfect parts, but building costs made it impossible to produce. So in 2016, I decided to design a much simpler, small and cheaper machine. The first idea was to sell a RepRap kit, but after the prototype phase, we figured the average consumer won’t have enough tools and skills to adjust and assemble the kit and the ‘free technical support’ would kill our business. The Minibot secrets are a good mechanical design, a good selection of hardware parts, very conscious assembly, a lot of attention in details, a lot of testing. This comes to a price, the product is expensive and hard to sell.

About Paulo Blank:

Senior Mechanical Engineer, +20 years experience in mechanical design: Consumer hardware, automation systems, oil and gas sensors.

+5 years of experience with FDM printers: 3D Printer design and maintenance, ABS and PLA part fabrication for prototyping and small series, consulting services. The main designer of the Maletabot project (2015) and the Minibot project (2016).

Past experience with mechanical design of SLS and SLM machines for research projects.

Amend for MiniBot Project:

 Unfortunately, while this post was being on wrote, Paulo said to me that he is about to shut down the project. He will make all the blueprints to build this 3DPrinter open-source so anyone can build their own MiniBot.

As for the market in Brazil, it is still very weak, low demand, an expectation of very low price, gives little value to quality and much value to price, either installment, discount or free training. That is, it is difficult for a company to pay the bills in this environment. In addition, the market is afraid of not being able to use the equipment, afraid of not being able to maintain it, and in the time of crisis does not buy.

Check out about the RepRap project!