Dremel Releases a Mass-Market 3D Printer
makezine.com
makezine.com
http://www.3ders.org/pricecompare/3dprinters/
I am sure that is not nearly all of them :)
The design is always an issue when printing too. Customers rarely design their models to be printed because they don't fully understand the process. If you design correctly you can get away with very little support material and still get very detailed models..if not then you end up with either a poorly printed object or significant detail loss on the surfaces from support material removal.
Maybe some plugins for popular CAD programs might be helpful...at least some sort of "ray" plugin that would show where your trouble overhangs/support material generation will be located. At least for training purposes.
Also, typically the less you spend on a printer the more time you spend tuning or failing prints. You can make a $600 in parts printer do very well if you know what you are doing...but it is much easier if you spend more on parts. Things like linear rails and proper leadscrews go a very long way...as does a proper hotend.
How do we determine this? An equivalent list of 2d printers would be significantly longer.
Of course, this is assuming that someone solves the hardware problem, otherwise it is likely just a failed investment; but that just makes it a risky investment.
> They haven't made it easy enough for Joe User to create
> printable 3d designs.
> Re: market saturation
SLS would also give you higher resolution with the option of materials, little waste, and a nearly ready-to-go part out of the machine. Anyone know if there are attempts to bring that to homes?
http://www.flashforge-usa.com/shop/3d-printers/flashforge-dr...
I purchase this model a few months ago and it's been alright - though the extruder seems to get jammed half way into my prints.
It's interesting to see the base price is below the OEM.
Nobody seems to want to make the printer with cheap highly compatible plastics and if they could limit the models you can print even better.
The Idea Builder is based on the Flashforge Dreamer,…Some things that you almost never read about consumer 3D printers:
* 3D printing is hard.
* You cannot print 'everything'. Overhang is always an issue.
* Most prints take hours (as in 'a full day') to print.
* You cannot print fast and have a good quality print.
* There are a ton of factors that influence the print quality.
* Every type / color of filament needs it's own settings based on trial and error.
* Great 3D print examples are mostly print on +$50.000 printers.
[1] https://www.ultimaker.com/blogs/news/2014/09/16/ultimaker-la...
In addition to your list:
* parts often need some type of post processing to
be viable long term (it depends on the process,
support removal, sanding/bead blasting, resin
injection, curing, etc.) this can take many additional
hours.
* different machines have different tolerances
That said, this is the first home 3D printer that I've been excited about, and the price point is killer.
Also, if they haven't licensed tech from 3D Systems, how long before they are sued.
* Print times will double or triple.
* Sometimes its really hard to remove the support material.
* You will need a lot more material.
* Support structures can break while printing because they are thin.
* The slicer doesn't create the right support.
potential replacement for non plastic parts too depending on the application.
also customizing parts. Custom dice for games, etc etc.
Battery cover gets lost? Replace the whole thing.
Toy breaks? Replace the whole thing.
Button comes off your jacket? Replace the whole thing.
(I'm not saying this is an ideal world -- I personally would much rather live in a world where things are long-lived but cost more -- but it's the world we live in.)
* Mounts for my washing machine's broken shocks (shocks were fine but the plastic part that holds them to the frame broke). $80/piece for whole new shocks or I could have just printed new mounts (which really are a stupidly simple snap-on component) for less than a dollar.
* The knob on one of our standing lamps broke and won't stay on anymore. I can order a new one for $1.50+$4.95 S/H or I could have just 3D-printed a really cool/custom one for $0.05.
* Lost some of the pieces in your Monopoly game? Just print some new ones. Heck, any gaming figurines can be printed trivially and there's a plethora of free, already-made ones to choose from.
* Missing Lego parts.
* Vacuum cleaner parts... I always wanted one of those wide under-furniture attachments but can't justify the purchase. If I had a 3D printer I could just print one.
* Seriously cool-looking/unique ceiling fan blades (you can print them even on a small 3D printer since you can join multiple parts together on the back of the blade where no one will see).
* Seriously cool/useful wall plates and switches. Example: http://www.yankodesign.com/2007/10/28/wall-cleat/
* Collar tags for my dogs. Actually, whole collars.
* Children's toys.
* Halloween masks.
* Protractors and compasses of any size on-demand.
* Centering gauges of any size on-demand.
* Custom Tupperware-like containers/boxes.
* Phone cases.
* Wire organizers. Really, why nobody sells a way to organize wires in storage?
I built my printer for a side project, and up to very recently, anything that I printed that wasn't related to this project had the goal of improving the printer. Besides fixing broken stuff, that's what I printed at the last couple of months.
Larger parts can be problematic on consumer quality 3D printers (particularly if they aren't being constantly fussed with). Very routinely 3D printer owners seem to have to put large amounts of time in to getting the printer to work correctly, and large complex pieces can take more than one (8+ hour) attempt.
Most of the things larger than a phone case (and it's the height direction that seems particularly problematic) have trouble printing in some fashion or another. This means that several of the most useful applications just aren't there yet.
Six bucks and change doesn't sound too bad to me, if it saves me having to spend time tracking down or building an appropriate 3D model to print. I could understand the attraction if it was $100, but six bucks?
> Lost some of the pieces in your Monopoly game? Just print some new ones. Heck, any gaming figurines can be printed trivially and there's a plethora of free, already-made ones to choose from.
But you can also use more or less any random thing you have lying around as a board game token, for free. Coins, thumb caps, washers, pieces of wood...
> Missing Lego parts.
Would they be able to stand up to daily use for years by enthusiastic children?
Lego parts also fit pretty well into the "just go buy some more" approach, too. You can get a bucket of 600 Lego bricks for $30.
> Seriously cool-looking/unique ceiling fan blades... seriously cool/useful wall plates and switches...
Presumably if lots of people wanted these things, somebody would be making them at scale in China already, no? It's fine if you want them, more power to you, but they don't really seem like something the mass market is breathlessly waiting for.
> Collar tags for my dogs.. children's toys... Halloween masks... protractors and compasses of any size... phone cases...
These things are the very definition of "cheap plastic crap," already available in a stunning kaleidoscope of colors, shapes and sizes at every retail environment from gas stations on up for practically nothing.
Not to mention that things like children's toys have a status component to them that can't be 3D printed. Kids don't want a toy that kinda looks like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, they want an Official Groot™ Action Figure By Hasbro like the one they've been saturation-bombed with TV advertising for. (And if they don't, their friends will happily torment them for not being sufficiently brand-conscious.)
> Custom Tupperware-like containers/boxes.
Is 3D-printer plastic safe to use for food storage?
Will most people want to spend time finding out when they can get a set of five Tupperware containers for $30?
> Would they be able to stand up to daily use for years by enthusiastic children?
They wouldn't need to if you could just print replacements.
The real problem with 3D printing lego bricks is that I don't think any current 3D printers can print precise enough parts. Even most Lego competitors produce inferior quality pieces with less precision.
> Lego parts also fit pretty well into the "just go buy some more" approach, too. You can get a bucket of 600 Lego bricks for $30.
You'd think so. But now try to source specific parts. specific mini figures etc.. People make a living buying Lego sets to separate the sets and sell rare mini figures and pieces individually, and sell of the basic pieces in larger lots
Many pieces are only available in a handful of sets. Many pieces only exist in discontinued sets. Many pieces only exist in specific colors.
Go to a Lego store, and you will find that the more "advanced" parts are rarely on offer in anything but big sets, while the basic parts can be bought by the bucketful.
Even with the second hand market, if you're trying to reproduce something, and realise you're missing a specific part and the alternative is going to the shops and buying a set that may have the piece, or waiting a few days, being able to just start an app and pick one from a catalogue would be amazing.
There's also a market for custom minifigs, that are today often quite expensive because the people making them rarely have any options for mass production. Whole new categories both of minifigs and pieces would become possible if they could be 3D printed.
> Presumably if lots of people wanted these things, somebody would be making them at scale in China already, no? It's fine if you want them, more power to you, but they don't really seem like something the mass market is breathlessly waiting for.
There's a lot of potential for things that are impractical to mass produce because while people may agree they want the category of product, they may disagree about specific features sufficiently that the only commercially available alternatives are not that satisfactory.
And there are a lot of things that would be convenient to have at some point or other, but that is too much effort to be worth tracking down, but would be nice if you could just download and print a design in minutes.
> Kids don't want a toy that kinda looks like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, they want an Official Groot™ Action Figure By Hasbro like the one they've been saturation-bombed with TV advertising for.
Do you have a kid? I can for sure say that while my son certainly do want the exact specific versions of a lot of things, he also often picks up on things that are not branded, or the exact specific thing he want is not the professional, polished version. And I think TV will be losing it's hold: My son just now (and this is a regular occurrence) picked an amateur Youtube video over Cartoon Network. His favourite "show" is a Youtube channel hosted by a 6-7 year old kid that builds lego and plays video games.
(and for the purposes of this: LEGO has surpassed Hasbro as the top toy manufacturer in the world - that should say something about opportunities in this market)
> Will most people want to spend time finding out when they can get a set of five Tupperware containers for $30?
Quite possibly not. But that is a problem today because it is new. It will quickly cease to be a problem.
Would you mind sharing that link? I've got some kids who would be interested.
My son, though, interestingly doesn't often ask for any of the stuff he showcases, though he does ask me to help build home-grown versions of some of the lego. And it got him into Minecraft.
My son now wants his own YouTube channel (lucky me - I've been put in charge of getting the technical side sorted out), and his own Minecraft server, and Evan is by far his favourite "celebrity". And this is the most professionally produced YouTube channel he watches. In general he seems to care more about watching a kid around his age that he can relate to than how professional the video is (e.g. he actively dislikes a lot of the adults doing toy / videogame review videos)
What kind of printer do you have?
I was under the impression no hobbiest-grade (ie, costs < ~$250k) could print to the exacting standards it takes to make Lego bricks.
"Fruit basket had a couple missing feet so I whipped up some replacements in Tinkercad and printed them out."
I agree that 90% of the 3D printing going on is just for novelty items like jewelry or statues, which doesn't seem worth it to me. But if the novelty printers provide enough of a market to ensure the availability of printers for people who are using them for inventions or scientific instruments, then it's fine with me.
Things I've printed in the last few months:
* a bracket for installing a PID controller into my homemade sous vide cooker
* brackets for clamping a shaft and pulley into a specific configuration for a tension testing rig
* a tiny clamp for holding ceramic fibers in said test rig
* an adapter for mounting a custom optical filter to a camera
* a prototype of a new strain measuring device
If you think of the 3D printer more like a tablesaw and less like a microwave the market shrinks but the use case becomes much more clear.
I get the super cheap novelty use. After that I thought what you want is a service to send your design to and get an awesome quality piece back.
You're forgetting about what was the primary driving force behind commercial 3D printers, which is hobbyists who don't have money for a full machine shop. Those are the people who popularized assembling Rep-Raps, and who are now buying cheap printers to play with them and use for their projects.
If you're a professional with a good idea what you're going to do with the printer, you definitely should go for something expensive. But if you're just a Joe Random Hacker, you probably can't afford anything more than the cheap one (and even if you could, you also need money to buy other parts for hardware projects).
Save the files, then start on your next project. Add a microcontroller! yay! I'm completely projecting on my kid, and that's my right as a father! Muahahaha!
https://support.thingiverse.com/thing:330812
Someday I need to clean up a bunch of other things and figure out what the cool kids are using to share designs instead of thingiverse now that Makerbot is kind of shunned by large portions of the open 3d printer community.
I print parts for my cameras in ABS which is pretty strong and has a nice side benefit in that if it ever does fail, it fails in a slow stretchy sort of way as opposed to just exploding like PLA plastic does.
I'm not sure what type of plastic the pieces you've held are but there's a really wide range of available materials ranging from really brittle to really strong (also with various degrees of heat tolerance in the end part).
I've used the lens adapters quite extensively and haven't had anything fail yet and some of the lenses I use with them are large old lens designs from the late 70s which tend to be quite heavy.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
I think I'm going to wait a while before buying.
It's not a good printer. belts slip, hard to keep the heat consistent or even know what a good heat is for a given model. i can futz around with it for a couple of hours and then get good prints for a while, but any downtime and i forget all the special little tweaks to get a good print. I probably have around a 1 to 2 ratio of successful prints to failures.
Fundamentally, the thing that's holding back 3d is the design software. openscad is great for what it is, but it's not like amazing. Desktop publishing really take off till mom could print a banner on the old dot matrix. Something like Broderbund's Print shop pro.
Heck, a clip on my dishwasher broke. it was way easier to just order the part. I still feel a little guilty about not printing up a replacement, but it would be dozens of hours for a $10 part.
They are a fun toy, i'd recommend going reprap or something and just figuring out how to make one. Actually doing useful work with one (even a cheap commercial one) would require a lot of discipline and willingness to fiddle with things.
If you just want one to design your own parts, hit up shapeways or one of the alternatives. send them your dxf get a thing. it's cool.
Regardless, diy or outsource, I'll bet you a nickle the design software is what holds you back. Blender is awesome, but not easy. openSCAD is awesome but not easy. etc...
Yes, but then you upload the design to Thingiverse or similar, and it becomes 30 minutes (plus printing time) for the rest of the world.
And 30 mins may in itself be unjustifiable to save $10... but ordering the part online will probably take time too...
For $3900, you can get a proper mill with a retrofit kit, controller and software:
Mill: http://www.grizzly.com/products/Drill-Mill-with-Stand/G0704
Retrofit Kit: http://www.grizzly.com/products/Mini-Mill-Retrofit-Kit-Compa...
This will cut steel, accepts tools up to 7/8", has a 1HP spindle motor, a much larger work volume, higher feedrates, etc.
I realize that there are plenty of applications that can be satisfied with wood and plastic, but making precise metal parts are really the killer app of CNC Mills.
This is awesome. It may not really have anything to do with their "moto-tool", but it just warms my heart to see their name on it.
The one I have now is about 15 years old and has gotten a ton of use and abuse.
To get there we really need to have a few innovative large manufacturers start publishing replacement part CAD models for their products. Making that leap is obviously a big deal for a lot of manufacturers who make outstanding margin on their replacement parts, but that is the kind of thing we need in order for a printer to be useful to the truly mass market.
Additionally, and I think we're seeing this already, we need a lot more 3d printable products to come to market. For example, I just recently finished printing a Clug bike rack for a friend (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/834664305/clug-cycle-st...). This is a prime example of bringing 3d printing to the general public - they provide a high quality version you can buy, or a cheap 3d printable version which you can pay a lot less for just the 3d files. We worked out that with the model cost and the material cost you could print somewhere in the region of 30 replacements before it was more economical to buy the mass produced high quality version. Thus far the rack hasn't broke yet either!
Now that I think about it, I should probably see what I can actually find for sale...
The only reason to eliminate those features is so that you are locked into using their consumables (or maybe to avoid some patent issue in the case of the variable infill).
It is sad that these are the types of printers that get attention. Nothing special about the design, build area or pretty much anything but it has a Dremel logo so of course it will sell.
Just another company trying to jump onto the already crowded 3d printing wave. I am sure there are more to come.
I think it is great people want to bring printing to the masses but locking the user out of temperature, infill, and other settings is not a good way to do it. Sure you eliminate their choices thereby eliminating user error...but in my case I would only be able to print about 75% of the things I do without being able to control the variables currently available in the slicers/firmware. There are many times even mid print where I vary the temperature, extrusion steps/mm and accel.
I guess it must be too much to ask that there be some actual innovation...instead of just offering the same printer that many others are selling with locked down controls (and I am assuming closed source firmware).
Smoothieware is becoming more popular and that is ARM based and has been around for over 2 years. The fact this printer has an ARM based electronics platform is not as "new" as it may seem...but of course it is much better than the atmega stuff.
http://www.shapeoko.com/ https://github.com/shapeoko/Shapeoko_2
http://www.thecooltool.com/en/products/unimat-metalline/unim...
There is a CNC pack which contains steppers, control systems and software:
http://www.thecooltool.com/en/products/unimat-metalline/unim...
I own the non-CNC unit and it's a fine piece of engineering!
However, am I the only person who thinks the first photo looks like they're microwaving a mouse?
> and a $999 price point
No. A 3D printer that's over $500 won't be mass market. Even $500 is probably too high. Most people might buy one if it's only $300 (with good enough quality - which could happen years from now). My guess is it will be another decade before normal families consider a cheap 3D printer, and only then it's when 3D printers will be "mass-market".
Mass market doesn't have to mean 100 million. 1 million is plenty.