Cetus

No, not the band behind Teenage Dirtbag, but rather the original version of this 3D printer. Emerging way back in 2016 on, you guessed it, Kickstarter, it was pretty popular, despite being a rather odd little thing. The spartan little printer could only really work with PLA thanks to a lack of a heated bed, featured linear rails on the X and Y axes, had no UI, and no design garnish. It was a simple machine initially, but it actually had three revisions, with the Mk.3 still on sale as we speak, complete with a pretty large set of upgrades plus the opportunity to buy more.

Stack em up (against each other)

The Best Small & Mini 3D Printers

Now that we live in a vast forest of Ender 3 clones; the Tiertime Cetus’s slightly wacky approach to being a 3D printer gave it a bit of character, something many 3D printers struggle to even get a whiff of.

Cetus2

As the original Cetus is getting on for six years old, there’s really no sensible reason to splash out on one now. The Cetus2 needs to bring something new to the table, and Tiertime is claiming it does, particularly with the extruder, which is by far and away the big, eye-catching headline here.

Tiertime says the Cetus2 comes with an extruder that offers something “never before possible” with an FDM printer – on the fly material and color switching – though it looks as if this is a Diamond hotend that Tiertime may have done some further development on. The company says this extruder allows you to do away with purge towers or any pauses in printing – sounds good, doesn’t it?

The extruder setup means you should be able to combine filaments to blend as you print, producing your own unique hue, as well as the chance to create transitional colors between areas or segments of a print. You could also print soluble support structures with this extruder – something that’s always useful in 3D printing.

In a promotional video on the Cetus2’s Kickstarter page, Tiertime claims you can produce “…functional prototypes from engineering material.” But the maximum temperature the hot end can reach is just 260°C, which is a bit short of the mark required for printing with serious engineering materials. So, TPU and PETG are about as far as you’ll go with this printer.

Hard and Software

The Cetus2 is going to come in a small assortment of flavors, meaning there will be four versions of the printer. The basic one, named “Essential,” will be a pretty barebones unit missing some of the sophistication of “Standard” and “Deluxe” versions. So, no silent steppers, no glass print bed, manual bed leveling, and a monochrome screen it is then. Either the Standard or Deluxe will feature automatic bed leveling and automatic Z-level calibration as well as a 4.3-inch TFT color screen, but only Deluxe will bag you a filament sensor and flow monitoring.

All versions get the fancy new extruder with live material switching, a 200 x 300 x 300 mm build area, power failure recovery, WiFi connectivity (as well as USB and micro SD), and Tiertime’s own UP Studio 3 slicing software and native G-code support. The latter is a key point because none of the machines we’ve mentioned in this paragraph above are third-party software compatible. There is, however, an Open-Source Edition of the Cetus2 available. It’s equivalent to the Standard machine option but will give you access to third-party slicers like Cura, Prusa Slicer, Simplify, etc.

Money

Now it’s that part of the show where we give you a little warning. This is a Kickstarter campaign, everything should be taken with a sizable spoonful of salt, and we’d urge caution, particularly when it comes to putting money into it. Kickstarter is not a shop, and you’re essentially donating money to a cause you believe in. It has its risks. Now back to the studio.

So far, the Cetus2 seems to be on a good track, with the targeted funding goal already backed twentyfold with over a month to go. Granted, it doesn’t seem to need much to get airborne as Tiertime only “requires” $10,000 in backings.

At the time of writing, “Super Early Bird” pledges are available, priced from $199 for the most basic Cetus2 and reaching $399 for the Deluxe. The Standard machine and its open-source twin are the same price – $299. Deliveries are stated to begin in the middle of 2022.

The Kickstarter page claims the pledge prices for the time being represent a 35% saving on the price of the machine, so there are potentially some bucks to be saved if you get in early. However, it wouldn’t be the first time that prices given changed eventually.

Time will tell if this printer is a winner or a binner, but you can be sure that we’ll be keeping a close eye on its progress. What do you think? Will the Cetus treat us?