3D Printing For All

Slowly but surely 3D printing is seeping into mass media with great hysteria and I think the average Joe is beginning to sit up and take notice of what is said to be a technological revolution. Some pundits reckon its as significant as the personal computer. I'm not convinced yet but one thing is for sure since I've been making 3D printed parts for the past 7 or 8 years the cost of equipment and materials have been dropping as expected and quality and reliability seems decent for such a new technology.

It could be said the first real consumer friendly mass market (ish) desktop 3D printer that was released last year was the 3D Systems Cube and more recently the larger platform multi head CubeX.

There are other desktop printers such as the Makerbot Replicator http://store.makerbot.com/replicator.html but these are more tunable and dedicated for the hobbyist or modelmaker. The Cube seems to be a 3D printer for Dummies, easy to use and not too much in there to confuse. More significantly the Cube "looks" like a home consumer product, the other home desktop printers resemble something thats cobbled together in your garage with bits of old doors and 1990's pc parts.

I saw the Cube in action at Euromold 2012 in Frankfurt where they were demonstrating and selling them along with quirky 3D printed products. The Cube was practically all sold out with a special show price of around 1000 yoyo's. There was a real buzz and excitement around the stand being marshalled by a Dutch crew with extremely strong american accents (I enquired what part of the states were they from, Ha!). You can normally purchase them online for 1569 dollars and materials cost 52 dollars per cartridge with either PLA or ABS being the material choices with a range of 16 colours available. The Cube essentially uses an established technology traditionally known as Fused Deposition Modelling or FDM. Up to recently an FDM machine of similar quality (albeit more for the industrial market) would cost around 10,000 euro at least. Theoretically in another few years we'll see 3D printers in Argos for pennys.

3D Systems consumer product website is www.cubify.com where you can purchase the machines or get yourself 3D "plans" (as people seem to call them, STL files to engineers) to print at home or uniquely designed 3D printed products from designers. I purchased a 3D printed IPhone cover, Macedonia, which is from Freshfiber http://www.freshfiber.com/home/. The mesh design could only be manufactured using 3D printing and has a nice protective bounce to the back of it.

Looking forward to getting my hands on my own Cube and giving it a go.