So i’ve got this little angle figure, and what’s better than one of these cheesy decoration
pieces?
You guessed it - two of them!
But, when it comes to consumer 2D desktop inkjet printers, it’s pretty clear that
the “all in one” class of devices has won by a far stretch, combining printing,
scanning, copying and faxing documents into a single, convenient package.
There’s not been a real equivalent in the 3D world yet - but that’s exactly what AIO
Robotics announced with their ZEUS machine on Kickstarter in 2013, which smashed through
their funding goal on the first day and then got funded with pretty much the same amount
of pledges they had after that one day.
Three years later, we now have a matured version of that same design, and judging by how many
users go out of their way to create an Amazon account just to give their praise for the
ZEUS, it looks like their concept is working out pretty well with the current iteration
of their machine.
There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get right into it.
And copy a few of these angels in the process.
So even on the first look, you’ll notice that the ZEUS is quite different from what’s
currently the standard approach to 3D printing.
It’s a design that reminds me of the crazy 5-axis industrial CNC mills from someone like
DMG MORI, but scaled down.
The entire construction is sheet metal, similar to how those 2D inkjet printers are built,
there’s a door on the left side to house the filament spool and this large, sliding
acrylic portal to the machine’s actual build and scan volume.
The ZEUS is quite heavy, but it’s easy to lug around with the built-in handles on the
bottom.
On the front, there’s a really comfortably sized 7” capacitive touchscreen with two
USB host ports and on the back, there’s a Kensington lock cutout, an USB slave and
Ethernet port, a power switch and the power input jack, which unfortunately is rather
loose and not a locking type like the Ultimaker’s, it doesn’t quite slide out on its own, but
i did manage to pull it out in a heartbeat once, thinking it was the USB cord.
Most of this hooks up to the built-in single-board computer, which is packed into the bottom
of the filament compartment.
The USB port actually doesn’t go anywhere, and the power input goes through the custom-made
control board, which uses an Arduino-compatible ATMEGA chip and seems to run a customized
version of Marlin.
However there’s no attribution given or source code published.
Still, if you ever wanted to, you could simply hook up the control board to your own computer
and use it without the built-in software, but that’s what makes the AIO Zeus special
in the first place.
As you boot up the ZEUS, it starts a full-blown install of Lubuntu and then goes on to load
the AIO Robotics interface, which presents you with four options: Print, scan, Search
and Apps.
Gone is the Fax functionality that used to be part of the original announcement, but
i don’t think that’s going to be missed much, since it would have required a ZEUS
machine on either end and relied on the built-in scanning only.
Now, the print menu takes you through exactly what you’d expect it to do - it lets you
print 3D files, be it from the onboard storage, from previous scans or from USB thumb drives
you connect to the machine.
You get previews of the files, pick one, slice it right on the machine itself and then print
it.
You can do basic scaling or rotating on the parts, and insert pauses at certain heights
of your prints, either to swap in a different filament color, or to insert parts like nuts
or magnets into your print.
And that workflow for 3D printing actually works pretty well.
The slicer, which is a version of Slic3r underneath, again with no attribution given, has just
its most important settings exposed in the simple wizard, but you can always dig in and
adjust more, which i quite liked.
Due to the limited hardware, neither the 3D previews nor the slicing process are particularly
fast, actually, you could say it’s painfully slow, with most of my slicing jobs running
between 15 seconds for something really simple and 15 minutes or more for something a bit
larger.
It would have been nice to see an option to automatically start the print job once the
slicing is done, since you’re just waiting on that process to click two more buttons.
Let’s move on to the scanning part of the software, the other big menu point, you place
your object on the ZEUS’ build table, select a scan diameter to minimize ghost features
that might be picked up from the background, pick how many sides the part should be scanned
from and hit go.
If you want to change the scan height, you have to recalibrate the entire scanner unit,
which takes quite a while, so i rarely did that.
What also takes an enormous amount of time is the scanning itself and the post-processing
the software goes through afterwards, which might actually be based on the Meshlab.
An eight-sided scan, which is the highest coverage you can select, takes about 45 minutes
to complete, and then roughly another 45 minutes to post-process.
Once that’s done, you can head back to the print menu, and print a copy of your heavenly
scan, or use an undocumented feature to copy the entire package of raw and processed scan
files to a USB drive, which allows you to then post-process them however you like on
a computer with your own software.
Also, you can upload and download files through a simple file browser if you connect the ZEUS
to your network with the included USB wifi stick or through the traditional Ethernet
jack.
These next two points in the main menu also use the internet connectivity, but feel a
bit lackluster, with the first one being a search function to find printable models on
Thingiverse or MyMiniFactory.
While it just didn’t seem to find that one design i actually wanted to print, which was
featured on the Thingiverse front page, once you do pick a file, the print process is straightforward.
Again, the interface for this is slow and takes a while to load results and previews
for your searches.
And the last option in the main menu, “Apps” is currently only home to one app that gives
you a few pages of tips, but the idea is to have more and eventually also third-party
apps in here, for example Thingiverse-Customizer-like options, generators for various 3D files or
an e-Nable prosthetic hand print assistant.
While the software overall is really comfortable to use if you don’t mind the long processing
times, i did have a few issues with how undercooked it felt.
On the very first bootup, the AIO software failed to load and i had to start it manually
from the Linux desktop, it also crashed a few times during use, but thankfully never
while scanning or printing.
It also routinely refused to let me start another scan or print process after completing
one, so i found myself rebooting the entire printer many times, and it often failed to
start up again during that reboot.
On the upside, though, the system is not far off from being a totally standard computer
just integrated into the machine, so if you ever feel like replacing at least the 3D printer
part of the software, you could just as easily run a full Cura, Pronterface or OctoPrint
install on here.
Both the username and password for the default user are just aio, so you’re pretty free
to do whatever you like with the system.
I also did some digging to see how much the AIO software phones home, but i don’t think
anyone will actually care about that in the age of the Facebook.
Hardware-wise, this all runs on an Odroid-XU4, which does have a fan that you can occasionally
hear spinning up, but it’s barely noticeable.
By the way, you can also connect a mouse, keyboard and whatever else you desire to the
front USB ports, and they work just fine, even within the touchscreen-optimized AIO
software.
On the topic of the touchscreen, it does have good viewing angles, but it’s a bit too
recessed to comfortably see and use especially the top edge at a normal stance.
Alright, scanning.
So the ZEUS uses a laser + camera approach, so with the laser slightly offset from the
camera’s position, it can reconstruct the surface by looking at how far the laser line
is offset at any given point.
But instead of rotating your scanned object, like many other simple scanners do, it actually
pans the laser itself over your object, then rotates the platform, scans again, and so
on.
So instead of one continuous scan, it gets four to eight individual ones that it then
stitches together.
According to AIO Robotics, this gives far better resolution than just rotating the table,
but in the scans i did, it performed only slightly better than conventional laser line
scanners, giving you good dimensional accuracy overall, but you end up with a fairly mushy
and low-detail scan, maybe picking up features around 1 to 2mm in size, which is far off
from the advertised 150µm resolution.
Even the sample scan they provide on their website, which looks much better than anything
this machine ever produced, only comes with roughly 300µm triangles, so i’m not sure
where that 150µm resolution is coming from.
You also get visible seams, apparently where the areas from each individual scan meet,
and extra geometry based on what seems to be guesswork anywhere the scanner didn’t
perfectly reach.
The large scanning area of 9 inches in diameter is noice, but unfortunately it’s not very
tall at 4.4 inches max.
That’s 23 by 11 cm for anyone not from the US.
Anything that’s even remotely glossy will throw the scanner off, even if it’s just,
like slightly metallic or shiny, it really needs to be completely matte, so you do have
to give those objects a good wipe-down with the included powder brush.
Also, it works best with white objects, anything that’s darker or, worst case, glossy black
won’t get picked up at all.
AIO sorta see this quality of scanning useful for schools or pre-schools where you’d copy
something like clay or play-doh models, and for that it’s probably well-suited when
it comes to what sort of detail reproduction you get, but the issue of turnaround time
still stands, where even with a compact part, a single scan, slice and print process can
easily take over two or three hours, which may be slightly impractical for copying the
work of more than one student.
For anything other than the simplest of objects, i honestely don’t see much use in the 3D
scanner part of this machine, but that seems to be a common problem with this laser-plus-camera
types of setup.
So while the white Xbox 360 controller looks decent around the sides, with details like
the data port and battery release picked up, the top shows some issues just from aligning
those individual scans and the bottom is pretty much gone.
There’s these extra bulbs around the handles and obviously mostly guessed geometry on the
bottom.
The angel scan and print has a few issues with the more constricted areas and, as expected,
do lack detail overall.
For 3D printing the scanned models, you will need to enable all the extra helper features
around your actual print, so whenever it came to “copying” something, i enabled raft,
brim and support material, as the scanned files would often end up in mid-air with no
contact and no adhesion to the bed.
And those features obviously mean extra material use, print time, and effort for cleanup afterwards.
But you can of course also use the AIO Zeus as a pure 3D printer.
And it does fairly well, even though there are a few questionable design decisions like
the clothespin “belt tensioners”.
It obviously uses the same area for printing as it does for scanning, and even the same
build platform, which is not heated and requires you to lay down a fresh layer of gluestick
before each print for optimum adhesion, and something like a sheet of buildtak would probably
have prevented the ever-present slight amount of warp that i was seeing with more massive
prints.
The bed is locked down during a print to keep it from sliding around, and it uses a mechanically
retracted probe to measure the bed and to compensate for any alignment issues, which
seemed to work well.
Though the machine doesn’t care if the bed is actually in there, it finishes the probing
cycle and tries to start printing either way.
For the toolhead, you get a quick-swappable hybrid metal hotend, which you can get replacements
for at $149 or in the convenient Makerbot-style three pack, though really, these shouldn’t
ever need to be replaced unless you really abuse them.
I got a spare toolhead with the review machine, which i needed, since the stock one seemed
to be misaligned in such a way that the filament would end up with a considerable kink after
each print, which meant removing, cutting and reinserting the filament each time.
The hotend doesn’t seem to be super special, with this enormously long thermistor package
sticking out the side, and there were a few occasion where the reported temperature dropped
from the set 197°C to less than 190°, having the machine stop mid-print.
The official solution from customer support was to simply turn off that safety feature,
and basically have the machine ignore faults like this.
Uhm, yeah.
On the topic of filament, you’re only going to be printing PLA with this machine, maybe
a PET if you really want, and the 500g PLA spools from AIO robotics at a reasonable $13
each actually printed well, but so did other PLAs i tried, only having to adjust the temperatures
and hitting print.
The filament path is… interesting, passing from the filament chamber through a teflon
tube over into the build chamber and then being left to itself before it enters the
extruder, which, i mean, it works, but it’s not super elegant.
On the extruder itself, you’re also going to find a filament odometer, which can detect
if the filament runs out or stops feeding, but that functionality is disabled by default,
even though it would be quite quite useful.
Some other things that are not put to use are these two switches that detect when the
filament door or the main door are being opened.
That smoked black acrylic hatch is supposed to stay open during prints to allow fresh
air in and stay closed during scans to block out ambient light.
You do have to slide it up in the exact right way or it’s going to jam.
With the door open, 3D printing ends up quite noisy with not only the motors and their vibrations
being very audible, but also the sheet metal parts rattling around.
One of the prints does look like the printer might have skipped a step, but the resonance
torture test doesn’t seem to be able to reproduce it.
So overall, print quality is decent, and as a 3D printer, the ZEUS does a much better
job than as a scanner.
The quality doesn’t quite live up to the gold standards, as there’s some visible
ringing due to the soft tensioning of the belts, as well as room for improvement with
part cooling and overhangs.
So, let’s recap before we turn this into an unwatchable 30-minute beast of a video.
Does the AIO Robotics ZEUS deliver on being a user-friendly 3D all-in-one machine?
Sorta.
I really like the interface and how streamlined it makes the scanning and printing process.
However, i wish they focused a bit more on making it stable and reliable, but of course,
that’s something future software updates might improve.
The internet connectivity also feel a bit underutilized at the moment.
As just a 3D printer, it works well, but is somewhat limited in material choices and part
geometries due to the unheated bed and slightly sketchy way of adhering parts with gluestick.
Also, i’d like to see things like the under-temperature issues fixed instead of just ignored and better
use being made of the integrated sensors that are currently mostly disabled.
Now, the scanning part, to me, feels like a commitment on AIO’s side that they couldn’t
fulfil to the level they originally wanted.
Sure, it scans, it’s easy to use, but the scan results were all but usable for me.
Maybe if you’re really only wanting to scan super-simply play-doh parts, it could be pretty
useful for you, but for anything that requires an accurate reproduction of the geometry or
has details you want scanned, forget about using this or even any other scanner that
uses the same principle.
So is it worth its price tag of currently a bit over $2000?
I’m not sure.
If the scanning part seems useful to you, maybe.
Or if you’re looking for that super-simple user experience in a 3D printer.
For me personally, i feel like there are too many rough corners and unfinished bits to
truly be able to universally recommend it, but i’m certainly interested in seeing what
AIO Robotics come up with next.
Alright, that’s that!
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