The new Ultimaker 3 arrived the other day, and Thomas Schmitt (student) unboxed it and got it set up and calibrated. Thomas has been designing a bobbin for fly fishing fly tying, and some of the project parameters, including a threaded rod and a hollow tube that serves as a thread guide, seemed to provide a good test case for a first print on the U3. The machine comes standard with dual extruders, and ships with a roll of PVA, a water-soluble filament.
The first print came out really nice, and the water-soluble support material is a game changer, especially for printing certain fine details and hollow areas. Some of the tricky biology models that faculty want to print are finally going to be within reach.