{"id":351,"date":"2013-07-19T11:22:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T10:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/?p=351"},"modified":"2015-08-27T12:43:32","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T11:43:32","slug":"3d-printing-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/general\/3d-printing-home\/","title":{"rendered":"3D Printing At Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
There has been much discussion recently about 3D printing, especially with the idiots producing the plastic gun, but has 3D printing got to the stage were it is viable for domestic use, a replicator in every front room, or more likely garage?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
3D printing is now commonly used in industry but still mostly as a prototyping system, where it is superbly equipped to shorten the development process, reduce costs and give marketing something to play with and get excited about. Once things get to the manufacturing stage, injection moulding still wins in most cases.<\/p>\n
What about home use of 3D printing, has this become viable? Well you can’t buy them in Curry’s, Walmart or Tesco yet but this will probably change in a couple of years. At this stage, the prices have come down dramatically so there are a number of models available for under $1000 or about \u00a3640, comparable with plasma TVs or Smart Phones. For this money, don’t expect a sleek unobtrusive unit that will look good in the living room but they do work. If the trend follows other electronic goods, in a few years time they will be even cheaper (or more likely, you will get more features for the same money). Chinese companies are not heavily involved yet, so expect price falls when they do jump in the pool.<\/p>\n
There are three elements to a 3D printing setup to consider, design software, the printer itself and material cost. Just like normal printers, the cheaper the unit the more expensive the toner or plastic in this case. At this point, the cost of the material for a cheap printer means that you are unlikely to make your fortune selling custom plastic figures on Ebay. But things are moving fast and maybe far sighted people should become familiar with the technology and design software now to be ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n
So what printer should you consider?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There are probably 50 3D printers available sub $1000, but the most popular are these<\/p>\n
RapidBot<\/strong> comes in kit form so needs assembling, about 6 hours work they suggest but Ikea also quote recommended times that most people don’t achieve! It looks like a clunky sewing machine and comes with everything you need to get started except software. It is reliable, reasonable fast and cheap. Open source software is available, see footnote.<\/p>\n Cube<\/strong> is already assembled, wireless connected and plug-and-play making it easy to get started. It can print different plastics, such as ABS used by Lego, in a range of 16 colours. Objects up to 5.5 inches cubed can be created. It does come with design software, a bit clunky but kids can cope with it. It is good for simple objects but the quality drops off as you get more complex, however for chess men, figures and other relatively simple shapes it is a good starter. Material is a bit pricey, \u00a332 or $50 a cartridge, which makes having all 16 colours a substantial investment.<\/p>\n UP! Mini 3D Printer<\/strong> is also easy to setup and use and is a bit smaller than the Cube. Pretty much everything is included, like thermal gloves. This 3D printer uses ABS plastic that comes on spools and a 1.5Kg white one is included. The software is intuitive and similar to early AutoCAD and can also import files (STL) from other packages. The spools are not cheap, about $100 each, with 6 colours available. It is more expensive than the first two models discussed.<\/p>\n MakerBot Replicator 2<\/strong> is more professional and dearer making it a bold choice for the beginner. It also uses spools to feed the material, PLA rather than ABS, which is more energy efficient. A 1Kg spool costs about \u00a355 or $85. It can print bigger objects (11 x 6 x 6 inches) and is a more commercial unit. The software is really good and everything is designed for ease of use It is fast but the quality is not as good as the price would suggest. <\/p>\n This is not an exhaustive list and other units like RepRap<\/strong> are worth considering. <\/p>\n What about software?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Except for RapidBot, these 3D printers come with their own software and MakerBot is probably the best. There are free open source packages available that are just as good and some names to search for are <\/strong> 3D printing is still not quite ready for home use in a commercial way, but it is coming so if you have ideas now might be the time to get started, maybe form a club to share the cost!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There has been much discussion recently about 3D printing, especially with the idiots producing the plastic gun, but has 3D printing got to the stage were it is viable for domestic use, a replicator in every front room, or more likely garage?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nAutodesk 123D Catch<\/strong> even offers an on-line tool where you upload images of an object taken at many different angles and it produces a 3D model that you can fiddle with. Once you are happy, you can download an STL file for your printer.<\/p>\n