About a month ago, thousands of subscribers to De Agostini’s model building magazine powered on their fully functional and adorable Robi robots for the first time. These robots came to their hobbyist creators one piece at a time with each issue of the magazine in true De Agostini fashion.

It was a long journey starting in late 2012 until this summer, but with their Robis dancing and chatting away happily many are left with itchy assembly fingers and wondering what they will do next.

Starting today, De Agostini are releasing their next series of part-by-part magazines in which readers can build what may feel is the next major world-changing technology: their own 3D Printer.

The first issue of My 3D Printer will go on sale 16 September with 55 issues in total. This means that your printer should be finished about a year from this coming October. Each issue costs 1,998 yen (US$18) which would mean the printer itself costs about 98,900 yen ($922) considering buyers of the first issue gets a 1,000-yen discount.

This is considerably more expensive than similar sized 3D Printers already on the market, but throw in the added intangibles like the satisfaction of building it yourself and… it’s still pretty pricey. However, when broken down in weekly payments, My 3D Printer at least psychologically seems like a reasonable investment.

The printer itself is an idbox model with a maximum build space of 15cm x 13cm x 10cm (6in x 5in x 4in). Along the way the magazine also educates you on news from the 3D printing world and offers some computer modelling and printer usage advice while you’re assembling it.

So while My 3D Printer is neither cheap nor easy for those looking simply to own one, it’s a great project for people looking to get an intimate knowledge of the technology or simply a novel hobby. It’s also perhaps the greatest model kit ever, in that when complete you can just keep printing out parts for other models!

Like they say, give a man a Gundam kit and he’ll build for a while, but teach him how to use a 3D printer…

Source: De Agostini via Hachima Kiko (Japanese)
Video: YouTube – Deagostini Japan, Plastic Pals

▼ A video look at the idbox 3D printer and De Agostini’s previous weekly project Robi

http://youtu.be/zyisEJpzzR4