$499 3-D Printer Drew Plenty of Attention at CES (Video)

Video no longer available.

3-D printing is far from new, but a $499 3-D printer is new enough to get a bunch of people to write about it, including someone whose headline read, CES 2014: Could 3D printing change the world? XYZPrinting, the company behind the da Vinci 1.0 printer, has some happy-looking executives in the wake of CES. They won an award, and their booth got lots of attention. This is what trade shows are all about for small and/or new companies. Now the XYZprinting people can go home and pump out some product -- assuming they got a lot of orders (and not just attention) at CES.

Timothy:Gary, could you go ahead and introduce yourself please?

Gary:Okay. Thanks Timothy. It is a very nice to have this opportunity to introduce Da Vinci 1.0 from XYZprinting. I think the key point that I want to talk about this printer is not just its amazing price which we offer to the market at $499, but also the printer features itself. We have no less, any less features than most of the current benchmarking products in the market. We have a larger build size, we have superb quality.

Timothy:How big is that build size?

Gary:It is 7.8 inch x 7.8 inch x 7.8 inch. So it is a fairly large build size. Also, if you can find the quality, it is also superb. But the most important is I think to bring up two points. One is the ease of use, the easy user interface. We try to manipulate the typical 2-D printers, the laser printers, plug and play kind of thing, you don’t have to do any kind of assembly or complicated setup for the printer, so just plug in USB cable, you can press print and do 3-D printing. On the other hand, there are lots of safety features for home users. So we try to put the entire package into an enclosure, so you don’t get burnt you don’t get into any kind of difficulties from the printing operations. So safety is one of our biggest concerns for the typical consumers. So again, to bring the price down, and we can do it better than anyone else, and then also, we have a nice quality ease of use and safety features for the product itself.

Timothy:Talk about the filament that you use.

Gary:Yes. It is a typical ABS filament, and also later on we will have PLA in a couple of months’ time.It is like cassette loading, very easy loading. So you buy the filaments from us, it is USD 28 for a 600 gm pack.

Timothy:Now the build platform here, is that motorized?

Gary:Yes it is.

Timothy:Is it heated?

Gary:Yes it is heated.Actually two main heating elements, one is the print head or the nozzle, another one is the print bed, so just to try to make the print quality well.So the heated bed is actually one of the features for us to make sure the quality is outstanding.

Timothy:What sort of files does it work with?

Gary:Standard STL files, you can grab from our own website or from any lots of database websites you can get, and also we have our own dedicated proprietary file formats you can transfer from a standard STL file to our proprietary formats. For printing files from files for proprietary formats, you can reserve or you can save to some dedicated configuration in order to get an optimized printer outcome.

Timothy:Can you show me how does data actually get into the printer here? It is an USB port or do you have SD slot?

Gary:Okay, from computer. So we have a lot of software all you need to have is a standard STL file downloaded from the web, and then just open the file from using our softwares and there are some easy configurations_____14:42and you just press print button.

Timothy:So it is a USB connection?

Gary:That’s right. Through a computer.

Timothy:Can we see the back?

Gary:Sorry?

Timothy:Can we see the back of the machine?

Gary:The back of the machine? Well, actually another cool thing is there is nothing at the back. Because the entire operation is within the enclosure. So the filament installation is inside the machine itself. So it is very easy to use. You might see the printer size is not that small but because we have a higher enclosure inside the machine, so the entire movement is inside the machine during operations. So that’s why the printer size looks a little bit big, but in terms of the operation size we are not bigger than anyone else.

Timothy:Now what about availability? Is it shipping right now?

Gary:Okay, it will be available in about a month and a half’s time, it should be available somewhere by the beginning of March.

Timothy:And is that worldwide?

Gary:Well, some parts of the world it is already available such as Taiwan and China. But for US market, we will available, people will be able to get the product on online channels from early March.

Yeah yeah

[NaughtyNimitz]

But what will the cartridges cost? And will they 'expire' each time I unwrap and insert one?

("Nudge nudge, wink wink HP?")

"So you buy the filaments from us...."

[macraig]

Proprietary consumables? Seriously? When are we gonna get past this crap? Ever?

Not one link to the company in summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice going, "editor". You managed not to provide a single direct link to the company that makes the product you're talking about.

Shoes?

[jklovanc]

In the future, users may be able to print shoes that are tailored to the exact size of their feet, among many possibilities.

Have they looked at the different materials that go into shoes these days? The different parts need to have different qualities. The sole needs to be grippy. The uppers need to be flexible and porous. The insole needs to be cushioning yet supportive. This is done today by using many different materials. Sorry but materials that come out of thermal printers don't have all those qualities and generally don't hold up under the stress shoe are put through. Let's try to be realistic about what this technology can do.

Re:Why is it so cheap?

[Kenja]

By comparison, their filament is around three times as expensive as others (more if you just get bulk rolls) at ~$46.67/kg.

I looked at it @ CES

[Anonymous Coward]

The overall construction was in line with a cheap 2D printer. The rails where thin, the structure in general seemed to be flimsy in comparison to the other 3D printers that were there. The proprietary print medium and the cheap-ish construction were enough to put me off and I was ready and willing to buy.

Re:Yeah yeah

[CastrTroy]

Same thoughts about why I don't own a color printer at home. I got a cheap ($55) black and white laser a couple years back, and I couldn't be happier. The toner is cheap (relatively), and I don't have to worry about the ink drying up, or print heads clogging before I've even had a chance to use up all the ink. I very seldom if ever need color printing, and when I do it's cheaper and easier to head over to the photo printer (Walmart) or print shop (UPS Store) when I actually need color prints. 3D printers have the opportunity to really change things, but only if I can obtain plastic for really cheap, preferably by recycling plastic from products I've already bought.

Re:Yeah yeah

[GameMaster]

Ink cartridges that expire each time you unwrap them? Where are you from, the '90's? Welcome to the future my friend, today we have ink cartridges that expire while sitting, un-opened, on the shelf.

I'm not really joking, we have an HP plotter where I work that does exactly this. When they went to replace the ink cartridge, they found that the entire stock of back-up cartridges had already "expired" according to a pre-set date built into a chip in the cartridge. Thankfully, HP was nice enough to provide a setting hidden away in the firmware that lets you over-ride that check. My guess is that they think the pro-market might not be willing to put up with their crap if they pushed it that far.