Every idea deserves somewhere to go, and for a lot of 3D printing hobbyists, that place has been missing. ELEGOO wants to change that with ELEGOO DAY 2026, launching September 10, its annual celebration built around bringing creators together on Nexprint. This year folds in a creator fund, a design contest, new model generators, and a sale, all pointing toward one goal: getting more people to create, share, and be part of a growing community.

Most of that action happens on Nexprint, ELEGOO’s open-source 3D model platform, built on the belief that creation should be open to anyone with an idea. Think of it as the hub tying everything together: models get uploaded, tools get discovered, and creators get a real reason to keep contributing. That shift is slowly turning ELEGOO from a printer maker into a community built around making.

Designer: ELEGOO

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The centerpiece is the new $1,000,000 Creator Fund, ELEGOO’s way of recognizing and rewarding people for sharing 3D models on Nexprint, not just paying for output but investing in the community itself. Rewards start with your very first submission, no waiting for likes or rankings to climb first. Individual models can earn up to $100, and stacking incentives push that ceiling to $300 per model.

There’s more structure built in too. Extra rewards unlock at 3, 5, 10, 20, and 50 submissions, so consistency pays off as much as any single hit model. Monthly rankings hand exclusive prizes to the top five creators, including actual ELEGOO printers, while a new bonus-card mechanism can push individual payouts even higher. It feels less like a marketing gimmick and more like a system built to grow alongside its creators.

From September 10 to October 30, ELEGOO runs the MakeItReal contest on Nexprint, and the premise couldn’t be simpler: take a flat idea, in whatever form it takes, and give it dimension, no design background required. There’s no theme to chase, just that shift from flat to physical. Winning entries will be picked and announced on November 20, each earning up to $300 in ELEGOO coupons for the trouble.

The idea behind it is almost sentimental for a hardware company, echoing ELEGOO’s belief that 3D printing works best as a creative outlet, not a manufacturing shortcut. A photo on your phone or a doodle in a notebook can end up as something you actually hold, not just imagine. Creators don’t need advanced modeling skills to compete, either. Nexprint’s upcoming Text and Image to 3D Generator lets anyone shape a contest entry straight from a photo or a written description, no CAD needed.

That generator is one of three new tools ELEGOO just added to Nexprint, alongside a Vase Generator and a Nameplate Generator, each built to make creation easier for beginners and veterans alike. All three do the same basic job: they take a drawing, a photo, or a few typed words and turn it into a printable model within minutes. None of it replaces real design skill, but it removes the blank-page problem that stops many from starting.

Put it together, and the loop makes sense. Someone sketches an idea, runs it through a generator, shares the result on Nexprint, enters it into MakeItReal, and picks up Creator Fund rewards along the way. None of those steps demand deep technical skill. This is the connected ecosystem ELEGOO keeps referencing, not a slogan, but an actual sequence anyone can walk through starting today.

All this activity lines up with the ELEGOO DAY Sale, with discounts of up to 54% on selected products, running September 8 through 29 with regional pricing, ELEGOO’s way of putting that ecosystem into more hands. The Saturn 4 Ultra 16K brings high-resolution resin printing for detailed sculptures, jewelry prototypes, and miniatures. The Centauri Carbon 2 Combo handles multicolor prints for home décor and personalized gifts. The Mars 5 Ultra offers a smaller resin option with sharp detail for tight workspaces.

What stands out about ELEGOO DAY 2026 isn’t any single feature; it’s the shape of the whole thing. A hardware company built its business on printers, then quietly built systems for sharing, competing, and earning that turn a machine into a habit. For ELEGOO, that’s what building an ecosystem means: more chances for people to create, connect, and turn ideas into something real.

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The computer peripheral market has always been more experimental at its edges than in the mainstream. Ergonomic trackballs, in particular, have attracted a devoted following among power users, but the options tend to cluster at two extremes: consumer-facing products with locked-down firmware, and niche open-source hardware that trades polished finish for deep customizability. Finding something that genuinely does both has rarely been straightforward.

Ploopy’s Adept trackball made a compelling case for the latter category, earning a loyal following with its open-source, 3D-printed design and QMK compatibility. But it always felt like it had more to say. Its circuit board had always reserved space for two more switches that never made it to production, and the base had slots for a wrist rest that never materialized. The A+ is that unfinished story, now finished.

Designer: Ploopy

The most visible addition is the button count. The Adept had six; the A+ has eight, two of which also function as knobs. Out of the box, the knobs handle high-resolution vertical and horizontal scrolling, but both are fully reprogrammable for other functions. That dual-purpose approach keeps navigation and control within a single hand without needing a separate scroll wheel or accessory sitting alongside it.

The gesture system is arguably the more interesting addition. Hold a button and flick the ball in any of eight directions, and the device fires a command. By default, the left knob activates cut, copy, paste, desktop switching, and media controls. For someone who lives inside a browser and a text editor all day, that’s a significant amount of functionality without ever lifting a hand off the device.

Layers add another dimension. The A+ has two: a navigation layer for everyday use and a control layer accessed via the right knob. The control layer handles on-device configuration, covering left-hand mode switching, toggling between high-resolution and stepped scrolling, and other adjustments. It’s the first trackball to bring this kind of layered behavior, working entirely without any software running on the host computer. There are also two bright LEDs that can be used to visually tell you what layer you’re on without having to rely on some embedded screen.

The detachable wrist rest is another long-promised feature that finally arrives with the A+. It slots in or out during use and can be screwed on permanently if preferred. The device stays ambidextrous throughout, and its 3D-printed shell means the community can print modified bodies, alter the layout, or swap in custom colors. That kind of adaptability isn’t an afterthought; it’s part of how the whole thing is designed.

The Pixart PMW-3360 sensor carries over from the Adept, running at a 1,000Hz polling rate with the tracking accuracy that has made it a standard for performance-oriented pointing devices. Omron D2LS-21 switches handle the physical buttons. The firmware remains QMK, configurable through VIA, with all design files, firmware, and assembly instructions freely available on GitHub. Kits start at $99 CAD.

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Let’s talk about the math for starting a small apparel brand. You have the designs, the drive, and a growing list of people who want to buy your stuff. Then you look up the gear. Aside from the thousands in hardware, materials, and a good air-purification system (because breathing is generally a good thing), you’re also looking at a massive space investment. Suddenly, you’re nearly $10k in, and need an entire garage for something the XtraMaker M1 Series offers in a tabletop format for a fraction of the price. With a modular printhead design no less, allowing for customization all within the form factor of a large microwave oven.

This is where the XtraMaker M1 Series finally brings apparel creation into the desktop factory era. It takes that sprawling, expensive production line and collapses it into a single, self-contained unit for $2,999. This is the micro-factory for fabric we’ve been waiting for, handling everything from printing the transfer to curing the adhesive inside a fume-filtered system that fits on a desk. It’s the machine that makes the business plan finally make sense, shrinking the startup cost by two-thirds and proving that the next big apparel brand doesn’t need an industrial loan to get started; it just needs a desktop.

Designer: XtraMaker

Click Here to Buy Now: $2999 $6499 ($3500 off). Hurry, only 38/50 left! Raised over $331,000.

The M1’s core innovation is condensing the entire five-step DTF relay race into a single, autonomous sprint. It prints, powders, shakes, cures, and purifies its own air without any manual handoff between stages. This integrated workflow is critical for a desktop machine, as it eliminates the mess and fumes that make traditional DTF printing impossible in a home or small studio. The enclosed system uses a multi-layer filter to capture stray adhesive powder and neutralize the chemical smell from the curing process, keeping the workspace clean and breathable. This turns what was once a multi-machine, garage-only operation into a clean, one-click process you can run from a spare room.

Print quality is anchored to commercial standards, with G7 Master-certified color accuracy ensuring that on-screen RGB designs translate faithfully to the final CMYK print. At a resolution of 1440×1440 DPI, the M1 Series produces sharp, detailed transfers where fine lines and photo-realistic gradients come through cleanly. The resulting prints are just 0.5mm thick, allowing them to blend seamlessly with the fabric’s texture rather than sitting on top like a stiff, plastic patch. This professional-grade output works across a huge range of materials, from cotton, denim, and polyester to more delicate fabrics like silk, giving creators a massive canvas for their ideas.

XtraMaker’s engineers clearly obsessed over reliability, building in a suite of defensive systems to prevent common failures. The most notorious issue in DTF printing, white ink clogging, is addressed by the LoopMaster system, which uses automatic 15-minute circulation cycles and continuous cartridge stirring to keep the dense ink from settling and drying in the lines (the white ink circulation system operates with zero ink consumption too). Even more impressive is the built-in UPS battery. If power cuts out, the battery instantly triggers a flush, replacing the ink with a protective fluid to save the printhead from drying out. The UPS battery also powers the printer’s auto-maintenance system while the machine is on standby or powered off. This enables the machine to automatically fill the ink channels with moisturizing liquid and keep the white ink stirring continuously for up to 30 days. Combined with over 20 sensors that monitor the machine’s health and ink levels in real-time, all this creates a system that actively works to prevent the most expensive and frustrating problems before they happen.

The entire package is tailored for small business growth, from the software to the hardware options. The XtraMaker Studios app includes a cost estimation tool that calculates ink and film usage, giving you a precise per-print cost so you can price your products profitably. A 3D preview feature also lets you see how a design will look on a finished garment, saving time and materials. The M1 itself comes in two sizes: the standard M1 for A4-sized prints, perfect for logos and chest graphics, and the larger M1 Pro, which handles A3+ prints for full-back designs on hoodies and jackets. This gives a growing brand a clear upgrade path as their product line and ambitions expand.

XtraMaker’s M1 Series is aimed squarely at the new wave of creators: Etsy sellers, independent streetwear labels, and craft fair operators who need professional output without the industrial overhead. While other desktop DTF printers exist, none integrate the entire five-step workflow, the advanced anti-clog and power-loss protection, and the built-in air purification into a single unit at this price. It’s a machine that understands that for a small business, the real costs are complexity, downtime, and mess.

Click Here to Buy Now: $2999 $6499 ($3500 off). Hurry, only 38/50 left! Raised over $331,000.

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The 3D printing community has spent years trying to prove that a printer can produce more than desk trinkets and cable organizers. Lighting has always been the harder sell, where aesthetics and function have to work together in ways that cheap plastic usually undermines. The better designers in that space have been quietly closing that gap, and the results are starting to look like things you’d want to live with.

OHR Design, a Canadian 3D printing studio, is a good example of what that progress looks like. Its Armadillo series takes inspiration from one of nature’s most recognizable shapes, the segmented, overlapping bands of the armadillo shell, and turns it into a lamp shade that adjusts depending on how much, or how little, light you want in a room. And it all started from a tea light holder.

Designer: OHR Design

The original Armadillo grew from an earlier OHR Design called the OHRB, and it’s since inspired a whole family of spin-offs. True to its origins, the Armadillo wraps a tea light in a series of concentric rings that tilt forward to close the shade down or pull back to widen it. At 240mm tall, it’s compact enough for a bedside table or a bookshelf without demanding much real estate.

For those who want the same aesthetic energy at a bigger scale, the Armadillo XL scales the concept up into a proper desk lamp. At 373.8mm tall and 283.9mm wide, it makes a statement on a desk without being overwhelming. It accepts a real light bulb rather than a tea light, making it far more practical for anyone who actually needs their lamp to pull its weight.

What gives both versions their character is the adjustable ring system. The segmented shade isn’t just decorative; opening and closing the rings changes how the light spreads through the room, softening the glow when the rings are fully open or concentrating it when they’re pulled shut. It’s the kind of thing that turns a simple on/off appliance into something you keep reaching over to tweak.

What’s equally interesting is how OHR Design sells these. You aren’t buying a finished lamp; you’re buying the STL files to print one yourself. The original Armadillo fits on a 180mm × 180mm print bed, making it accessible on smaller machines like the Prusa Mini or Bambu Lab A1 Mini. The Armadillo XL, being larger, requires a 256mm × 256mm build volume.

The filament choice is entirely yours, which means the lamp can be as neutral or as bold as you want. OHR Design has been spotted using Overture’s Super PLA+ in various colors, from muted naturals to vivid hues, all of which change how the diffused light reads. Not many lamps invite you to physically shape the light they cast, and fewer still can be reimagined entirely based on the color spool you have on hand. The Armadillo family puts creative control squarely in the hands of whoever prints it, and that’s a genuinely refreshing place to land.

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