Engadget Experiences the Solidoodle 3 3D Printer 70
Engadget reports that former MakerBot employee Sam Cervantes has brought to market — or at least to Engadget headquarters in prototype form — a working, cheap(ish) 3D printer from his own company Solidoodle. Originally, the new Solidoodle 3 printer was announced at $500; the price has crept up to $800, but that still sounds like a bargain in the world of home fabrication. Unlike the current MakerBot, it has no built-in card slot, so a computer connection is required for the length of a build.
That's great and all... (Score:0, Informative)
But can it print up a good site UI for engadget? Seriously, that site is hideous.
The top stories list on the right side is straight up illegible. Whoever chose that font over all those busy images needs to be taken out back and shot.
I guess that's what you get when you run a business using mostly unpaid intern labor...
ABS solid doodles are STRONG. (Score:5, Informative)
Saw a makerbot being demonstrated with black ABS plastic at a conference last month. The parts made with it were STRONG. (Replacement components of the print head had been manufactured this way.) Also a sample was being made with internal, hollow, completely enclosed and sealed, honeycomb cells, which made it very light without substantially reducing its strength or dimensional tolerances. Should be ideal for things you need to float. (Try building THAT without a 3-D printer: You'd need to bond two or more pieces together.)
I understand one of the problems with the makerbot that metal-frame follow-ons like this are trying to address is that the wooden frame flexes and changes size with relative humidity, making tolerances lower than they could be with a metal frame.
Does anyone know how well ABS works for lost-"wax"-casting originals? Or same question regarding other "hot-glue plastic wires" that could be fed through these machines?
Re:Flaky technology solving wrong problem (Score:2, Informative)
Formlabs is being sued right now over that printer. I believe 3d systems has the relevant patents.
Re:Make & Re-use (Score:4, Informative)
These exist. There's even a contest to build a reliable, sub-$250 home filament extruder. Filabot used to have the lead, but http://www.3ders.org/articles/20121023-making-a-plastic-filament-extruder.html [3ders.org] is also fairly interesting. But none of them seem to be close enough to finalized to actually use in daily life yet. I've heard someone say that it'd be easier/cheaper to just buy loads of plastic pellets rather than dealing with impure plastics from recycled materials. Pellets seem to be about 1/5th to 1/10th the price of good filament.