TOME 3D Printer - First Portable, Self-contained 3D Printer Coming soon

Most of use have probably had those moments when we wished that we had our 3D printer with us, but unfortunately it was back home, due to its large clunky size, and lack of portability. A couple guys have come up with a design for a truly portable and self-contained 3D printer that they hope can make a different in field work, field hospitals, and scientific research. The TOME is a printer that folds up into a briefcase, runs on battery power (solar chargeable), and is going to be very affordable ($1500 or less). Read more about this incredible design, and the progress being made on it's production at http://3dprint.com/7462/tome-portable-3d-printer/

http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...tome-main2.jpg

The arm holding the extruder doesn't strike me as a durable or rigid design.

The RAMBo controller design shows you don't need an exotic stepper driver thermal design to be reliable in high heat (I've run the 3D printer without fuss, heat sinks or fans in 115˚F air), and that machine design doesn't show anything that benefits from the high current abilities of the DRV 8818. The problem being addressed is that Pololu stepper modules aren't big enough to decently spread the heat. The Allegro stepper driver chips are designed to dissipate heat through the circuit board copper, and the size of a Pololu module starves the stepper IC of thermal dissipation area, especially the off-brand ones that don't follow Allegro's thermal design recommendations.

You could probably do the same thing now with a Portabee GO and Goal Zero solar li-ion setup.

Thank you JRDM for the comment.

Just to clarify, that arm pictured is just an artistic rendering. The actual arm is designed from a clam-shell injection molded housing that is fiber reinfored. It also has an aluminum rail section with ball bearing guides for the extruder to ride along. I know it appears to be flimsy in the image but this was just an artistic rendering.

I also agree with you about the stepper drivers, we will most likely go with the Stepper stick style driver and use a 2Oz copper pour with a sufficient quantity of vias to cool the chip.