Dremel Releases 3D Printer 105
Lucas123 writes Power tool maker Dremel today announced it's now selling a desktop 3D printer that it said is targeted at "the masses" with a $1,000 price tag and intuitive software. Dremel's 3D Idea Builder is a fused deposition modeling (FDM) machine that can use only one type of polymer filament, polylactide (PLA) and that comes in 10 colors. The new 3D printer has a 9-in. x 5.9-in. x 5.5-in. build area housed in a self-contained box with a detachable lid and side panels. Dremel's currently selling its machine on Amazon and The Home Depot's website, but it plans brick and mortar store sales this November.
With a name like Dremel (Score:1)
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In fact, you might probably be able to 3D-print a Dremel with it.
Re:With a name like Dremel (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, you might probably be able to 3D-print a Dremel with it.
It can't form complex machines. Guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts. It doesn't work that way. But it can form solid shapes. Knives and stabbing weapons.
Underspecced? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it me or does it sound a bit underwhelming for $1000? I don't mean the price is non-competitive, it just seems like I'd want something more capable if I was going to take the plunge. Burn $1000 and in a week won't you be hankering for a much more capable machine?
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What's underwhelming about it? That it can only print with PLA? The build volume? What do you mean by "more capable"?
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I've seen dozens of printers listed with better specs, but most of them are dummy specs. You couldn't run most of those machine anywhere near the specs they list. How many 3D printers out there actually achieve the speeds they claim, or the print area?
Honestly, if they can deliver a machine that works at those specs out of the box without tinkering or having to recalibrate, it just might be worth that amount. It looks reasonably solid and rigid and, from an outside view, well designed. (No idea where the sp
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in the third picture of the device from the top, they show the print head, and to the lower left, the spool. looks like it threads behind the head, and into a holder above it.
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What's underwhelming about it? That it can only print with PLA? The build volume? What do you mean by "more capable"?
No heated build platform.
Re:Underspecced? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it me or does it sound a bit underwhelming for $1000? I don't mean the price is non-competitive, it just seems like I'd want something more capable if I was going to take the plunge. Burn $1000 and in a week won't you be hankering for a much more capable machine?
Yes. And spending two months debugging bed/head temperatures, print and extruder speed, and layer thickness, so your prints consistently stay solid and adhered to the bed rather than peeling, will be totally invisible to you because that $1K presumably means someone else already did that. There's a lot of value in getting something that's been debugged, and that's particularly the case for extrusion-based FDM 3d printers. It's okay to be hankering for a better machine, particularly if you're already printing. The best 3d printer is the one that's actually building parts for you.
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I get what you're saying. Most of the stuff Dremel sells is generally pretty decent stuff, or always used to be back in the day. If its a good machine and does what you need to do, then sure, that's cool. I can just imagine a LOT of interesting projects I might want to do that where I might want to use other materials or etc. So that's my curiosity really is if I spent $1000 on a machine like this one will I be hankering for the $3000 machine in a week?
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The PLA is no good though. Great for decorative things, but if you actually want to do prototyping of engineering stuff, you want ABS.
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What I tell people who are thinking about 3d printing is: if you have a specific project, that needs 3d printing, for which going through shapeways or something is either uneconomical (because you're going to need six tries to get your widget dimensioned correctly) or too slow (you're going to be making a ton of different prototype widgets) then a home 3d printer may be a good idea for you. Otherwise, you'll get it, print an octopus and a tardis, and then it'll gather dust and you'll kick yourself for havi
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Great, thanks! I am definitely getting some good info. 10 or 15 years ago when I was doing a lot of oddball stuff I'd have probably had one of these things ASAP. These days its hard to find the space and time to do projects, so I really am behind the curve. I have some interesting ideas, but nothing so solid that it yet warrants running out to spend $1000 (ouch) right now. At least I'm getting a better idea of what might be useful. Hopefully I can find a maker space that isn't too far away one of these days
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A makerspace is definitely the best bet as regards hardware. If you think you're going to pursue this, start playing with modeling software now. It's at least as complicated. (Moreso if you get a 3d printer that already works and you don't have to assemble and tune it.) Sketchup, Autocad's new free 123d or whatever it's called, freecad, are all very usable for graphics-oriented, and openscad is good if you're a programmer. I find freecad the easiest combination of precision, adaptability, and ease of u
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depends what you're comparing it to.
if you're comparing to similar sized wanhaos or flashforges(it's a rebranded flashforge) its not that different in price.
if you compare it to makerbots it's a bargain. and less bullshit than current mbi products. and just as capable (PLA only like all current makerbot printers).
as to why having ability to print abs is sometimes nice: it can withstand higher operating temps for the part you print. 60 degrees(hot car) and pla gets easy to deform.
as to why cheapo printers
Wrong type of machine for Dremel (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I would have expected Dremel to come out with a small desktop CNC, not a 3D printer. Given the price of the Roland iModela, Dremel would probably have offered a much better, bigger and stronger machine for the same price.
Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel (Score:5, Informative)
From personal experience..
Trying to design and build a CNC machine to function as an appliance is very, very difficult. There are simply to many factors that impact how well the machine would work. A person who writes g-code for a milling machine has to be able to understand how it will work - balancing the motors, speeds and feeds, materials, and working head. A 3D-printer requires very little, if any, skill on the part of the person using the machine. They can just load pre-packaged items, if they feel like it. It is a much more consumer friendly product with a huge upside.
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I take it you've never actually used a 3-D printer?
Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure he could ask, so you've never used a CNC machiene?
3-D printing, while it can be challenging, is just a matter of how fast the head can move while "printing". With CNC you have to know how big of a bite your bit can take out of your current material, what the stress loads are at different speeds and it changes while going around corners. How big of a bite you can take with your bit based on the bit, material, and speed of rotation.
Now for some additional fun. Just because you can make it work on a CNC doesn't mean it won't destroy your expensive bits quickly. Also you want it to be productive so you can't run too conservative a tool path or a 4 hour job will take 12 hours and cut your productivity to 30%. Not to mention if you mess up the calculations you might just outright destroy bits when you run. Not likely to destory your 3D print head because you took a turn too quickly.
So yes, using a 3-D printer is MUCH easier. He didn't say it was simple, he just claimed it was easier.
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My experience running SolidWorks through MasterCAM was very different.
Feed MasterCAM the specs on your machine and the part file, and what you got Just Worked. Clamp the workpiece and you could walk away.
Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel (Score:5, Informative)
I build CNC machines
I build 3D printers.
I am guessing you have never used a CNC milling machine. Let's look closer:
Some variables for CNC milling (Not exhaustive):
type of bit (material and shape - probably 20 base shapes in a beginner shop. dozens of bit materials)
geometry of bit (literally thousands of options here)
new or worn, and what is the wear pattern (variable every time. Usually not an issue unless you are doing very precise work, in which case, you need to mike the wear and enter it into the tool table)
number of flutes/teeth
helix angle
center cutting
roughing or finishing
tool coating
shank
undercuts
step over percent
cutter offset
surface cutting speed
spindle speed
is spindle speed variable
feed per tooth
depth of cut
conventional or climb milling
material being machined
coolant feed enable
coolant feed type
tool changer
tool number in tool table
homing and limit switches
All of these variables play off each other. You can change one variable, it can then cascade into changing 4 or 5 others easily. Many of the variables above can destroy the bit, machine, part, or injure you, if you get it wrong.
The fact of the matter, I can take yoda.stl, run it through slic3r, stick it in a 3D printer and not worry much about it. Someone needs to know the g-code along the workflow, but realistically, it is the coder for Slic3r in this example and it is automated. If the machine is calibrated, it will print. If I run a milling operation through CAM software, it needs to be test cut to verify it won't damage anything. Just not inserting the milling bit all the way can damage the machine.
Now, look at it from an appliance situation. Do I know as the machine designer, what material or bits will be used? Do I know what sort of shape they are going to try to machine? I would have to lock down that machine to a ridiculous degree to get it to behave like an appliance, and even then, I can't be sure it won't damage anything. The Dremel 3D printer looks to be locked down with very few variables. It is designed for people to just load a file and hit "run". From a marketing and legal point of view, which is a better product to market?
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Looks like your CNC machine could use some forms of feedback to make it more reliable.
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Your ignorance is showing. I see it all the time from young white collar types. Someday you'll grow up and realize that having a degree and a desk job do not make for a superior human, and then you'll maybe tone down the smug. We can all hope anyway...
rijrunner left out huge areas of expertise in hopes of making it understandable outside the field, as a courtesy to people like you. I saw no mention of cleanliness, rigidity, or workholding. Any of those are easy ways to fail. A single metal chip fallin
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I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you, your horse is too high.
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It does seem rather weird to treat it as an intractable problem. Are we really talking about something that's AI-Complete here, like natural language understanding? Something not succeptible to a combination of chained rules, physics calculations, and statistical analysis? I seriously doubt it. So different machines can act differently due to wear, etc? Gee, people have never written programs to deal with that before, heavens no. So some things may require a decision from the operator, like whether to resta
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I take it you've never actually used a 3-D printer?
I have used both 3D printers, and a Sherline table-top CNC [sherline.com]. The amount of operator skill needed for CNC is far higher. You need to be able to plan and code the specific sequence of steps, the spindle speed, gear backlash etc. You need to know about cutting fluids, metallurgy, work hardening, when to use "climb" milling, etc. Even after ten years I still learn something new every time I talk to an experienced machinist.
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I've written scripts to turn 3D drawings into G-code programs and making sure that the cutter is going at the correct speed (so that it can actually do the job without breaking itself or your part) is a bit harder than you appear to have considered.
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When that actually happens and we see reliable printers it'll move from being a niche thing into the mainstream. The prob
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We are no-where near the point where fused filament 3D Printing is a plug and play operation. In the last 12 months I've had to spend a lot of time and effort to get reasonable prints, and have had to regularly consider things like:
Printer idiosyncracies (which a professional printer should avoid):
- Wear & tear on pulleys and bushings changing belt performance
- Correct hot end temperatures, scorching and smoking of filament leading to clogged nozzles
- Bed flatness
- Enclosure temperature control, adhesi
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12 months?!? What a coincidence, I read a study that claimed that a 3D printer pays for itself in a year! How lucky for you!
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You might want to step back for a second.
Your first list is items that deal with engineering issues and, as you say, can be engineered around. 2 of those 4 items do not apply to the 3D dremel printer.
The second part.. has absolutely nothing to do with running a 3D printer and everything to do with part design. You could send me your CAD files, I should be able to run them through slic3r, and print them sight unseen. Parts design requires a lot of skill. Printing out a part, not so much. But, with so few va
Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel (Score:4, Insightful)
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You mean like the Roland Modela that was out 20 years ago? Yeah, 3D printing sure is cutting edge stuff.
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Frankly, I would have expected Dremel to come out with a small desktop CNC, not a 3D printer.
I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if the WD-40 company had created a product to make things stick together.
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If you are feeling really evil, print out a replica of the WD-40 label and put it on a can of 3M Spray Adhesive.
great (Score:1)
Now when I massacre something with the cutting wheel I can make another and ruin it again
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This might be the most consumer-friendly-name company providing a device, and being able to buy one at Home Depot means it's likely returnable at Home Depot -- at least once it makes it from the website to the stores.
The price point is almost meaningless, since to most, every other company is going to seem like a nerd toy, while Dremel(tm)(r)(c)(sm) Brand Tools sounds like something trustworthy.
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Have you ever used a dremel tool?
For the most part they're crap. Perhaps before the '80s thay had good stuff but it's been downhill for a long time.
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Have you ever used a dremel tool?
For the most part they're crap. Perhaps before the '80s thay had good stuff but it's been downhill for a long time.
I'll bite. I've used a Dremel-brand dremel tool in the late 90's, and found it solid (if made of a lot of plastic), dependable, and accurate. The accessories were way too expensive, but Black & Decker accessories are of the same quality and fit in the Dremel opening.
B&D, Ryobi, Makita and similar manufacturer's dremel tools though -- I've found to be underpowered, made of cheap components, and have a shaft locking mechanism that is abysmal, not holding the shaft in a centred manner at all. DeWalt
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Their "classic" offering is a solid tool. I was unimpressed with one of their early cordless models. I'd buy them again if I were replacing my "classic."
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My mid-90s Dremel kicks ass.
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My mid-90s Dremel kicks ass.
My mid-70s Dremel kicks ass. I'm limited to only two different shank diameters because it has a pin chuck instead of a jaw chuck, but that hasn't limited its usefulness at all. And it seems that back then the bearings had tighter tolerances - the thing runs quieter and smoother than any of the new Dremel tools I've used. It also has speed regulation, so when I load it down it slows down less than newer models. I think they got rid of that feature because too many people were abusing it and burning out the m
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The trick is to grasp that at high RPMs, it's not pressure that drives the work. A light touch will make more progress.
Re:Too expensive (Score:5, Informative)
Plenty of cheaper (and probably better) options from Makerbot etc.
Now it it came is at a $400 price point it would be a whole different discussion.
You're not their target market. There are a lot of old-school tinkerers who are familiar with Dremel - and a lot of people who are familiar with Home Depot - who know nothing about 3D printing. Many of those folks would be very interested in 3D printing if they knew about it. So here we are.
I think Dremel is going to raise the stature of 3D printing in an entirely new market and that will quite frankly help every other company out there in this space.
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You're not their target market. There are a lot of old-school tinkerers who are familiar with Dremel - and a lot of people who are familiar with Home Depot - who know nothing about 3D printing. Many of those folks would be very interested in 3D printing if they knew about it. So here we are.
I think Dremel is going to raise the stature of 3D printing in an entirely new market and that will quite frankly help every other company out there in this space.
This is the first 3D printer I'm seriously tempted to look at. Dremel makes professional tools for fine detailed work, and I have some faith that this device will work well. And it doesn't have that "maker" stench of unwashed wanna-bees. Not a device to "hack" or experiment with, but one to actually get some useful parts built for my current projects.
This is so 2012. (Score:1)
Re:This is so 2012. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Dremel 3D pre-sale starts Sept. 18, 2014, on homedepot.com and amazon.com, with in-store availability at select The Home Depot® stores in early November."
That's a WOW right there.
I've been through the PC boom in the late 70's and the Internet boom in the 90's. That "no one points at 3D printers" is no more true than when it was said about PC's in 1979 or the Internet in 1994. (I heard that exact sentiment expressed those years).
This is what a boom looks like right before it goes off.
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Weeel....sort of. Depends on what you mean. I looked at a lot of (well, several) computers before the Apple ][ was released. They were all interesting, but not quite interesting enough. Then the Apple ][+ was released with a Pascal card, and I bought it. A lot of other people made about the same choice at about the same time. That was when the PC bacame notable. A few years later IBM released the IBM PC with no significant advantage over the current Apple product...but that was when it boomed.
This is
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Honestly, I think FDM is not the future of 3D printing.
Stepping back though, I am thinking of the hundreds of computer companies that have come and gone. There were some very big names that stepping into the PC business at the time as well as others who were big in other areas who moved into this field trying to position themselves. They ran on the potential of the market, not on how to make it happen or on what it would look like. The ones who moved on were the ones who saw the growth market. Altair, Sym-1
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There's two types of processes that I'm surprised I've not seen more focus on.
1) Printing of, and then filling of molds, which can then be melted down and reused. That's how the higher-end 3d printed parts that you can buy online made, including almost all 3d-printed metal parts you get from online 3d printing services (the extra steps for metal being to coat the mold in a ceramic shell and melt away the mold). The only commercial 3d-printed metal that I'm aware of that doesn't work in this manner is iMater
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Oh, and in #2, sound insulation would also be very important, both for the compressor (if compressed air is used, rather than bottled oxygen) and for the jet itself (which is basically like a tiny rocket engine). And I guess the filter isn't just about removing any incomplete combustion products from the exhaust, but also any dust or the like.
Even if it ultimately isn't suited for, say, a quiet home office, 3d printing isn't really an home office task, we're more talking about a "garage workshop" sort of th
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This is commoditization of 3D printing.
No ordering from small companies online or spending weeks finetuning; just go to the local store, unpack it from the box and start using it.
Isn't this what we've been talking about for so many years; printing out spare parts at home and such?
If I see one of my non-techy relatives print out some boring part they need to fix something, I'll go "WOW".
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Isn't that now the limiting factor?
So we have 3d printers in stores. Now we need all of the home devices that could potentially need spare parts printed to be available online, preferably in a unified database. You need manufacturer buy-in. Maybe some sort of certification mark that manufacturers can stick on their devices to show that printable replacement part models are freely available. I could use a new cheese compartment door in my fridge right now, for example. And I live in Iceland where shipping ti
Home Depot (Score:3, Funny)
Dongs (Score:2)
The new 3D printer has a 9-in. x 5.9-in. x 5.5-in
You could make a wide variety of big colorful dongs with this thing! For... educational uses of course.
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What sort of 3d prints are you looking at?
Perhaps my expectations of 3d printers are too high because I buy from professional 3d printing services rather than using a low-end home 3d printer. They use high end products and sometimes do post-printing finishing work. But the quality of the stuff you can get is truly excellent, and out of a very wide range of materials.
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9-in. x 5.9-in. x 5.5-in will fit an AR-15 lower receiver too. Toys for everyone!
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If it works with OS X and Vista, that means you should be able to reverse engineer the protocol and make it work with Linux without too many issues. The drivers seem to work with AutoCAD tools, so my guess is the drivers aren't proprietary either but use a common protocol.
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Oh, and it appears to be a re-branded one of these http://www.flashforge-usa.com/... [flashforge-usa.com] which say they support Linux. I'm guessing that FlashForge Dreamer drivers for Linux would drive the Idea Builder without much modification.
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Hmm... scratch that; it's not a re-branding, as the Dreamer uses more filament types, is heated, and has a few other goodies missing in the Builder. And it's only $200 more.
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Nerds! (Score:2)
Don't Miss The Point (Score:1)
This is great news, I say that as someone on the outside of the 3d printing world who just reads about the stuff. A friend has one and has shown me some of the things she made.
Who cares if has this Spec or that Limitation. Who cares if Makerbot is better for the money or whatever. The important thing is an entry like this will shake the market. Maybe other big names are on the verge of introducing competing products: Black and Decker? HP probably, Apple any rumors? Whirlpool("with just the touch of a butto
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I'm sorry, this is not the 3D printer you are looking for.
No tissues or organs, no little machines. Nothing earth shattering.
Think Dungeons and Dragons pieces, Star Wars figurines. An occasional spoon. All looking like a low res poly rendering from the 1980's.
It's a toy.
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I realize it's not going to print ebola-eating replacement spleens when i get it out of the box.
Think Dungeons and Dragons pieces, Star Wars figurines. An occasional spoon. All looking like a low res poly rendering from the 1980's.
It's a toy.
I totally wish my parents could have bought me something like that when i was young. Now some kid *will* have it and be inspired.
it's all good. People will buy Dremel because it's a household name and Makerbot is not.
I'm not actually Looking for a 3D Printer At All.
Yo
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And those nerdy kids will grow up playing around with and learning 3d modeling software to be able to make their toys.
This is a good thing.
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It's a toy.
Bullshit. That's spoken like someone with too little imagination to know what to do with it. There's plenty of useful stuff one can do with a single head PLA only 3D printer. Look for example at how many printers are built with printed parts. Turns out you can build more than just 3D printers with plastic parts. Who knew, eh?
And with a little gingery furnace, one can go from cheap 3D printed plastic t cast aluminium... there are several online guides for this. And so on.
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Which is fine though. Plenty of people spend plenty of money on "toys" to make this a viable product. $1000 for a 3D printer which is really just a toy isn't all that bad. The XBox One was $500 when it came out. By the time you get a second controller and a few games, you're probably getting close to $800. And the XBox One, or PS4, or any other console is really just a toy. You can't even run your own code on them. You can pretty much just play games. The new iPhone just came out and it's $65
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Services like that exist online, and they're excellent, albeit rather slow. I personally use iMaterialize because they have such a wide range of material options (everything from rubber to titanium) and finishes (for example, 4 different options for silver), but there's lots of others out there, and some are cheaper.
If you've ever played around with 3d modelling, I definitely recommend giving 3d printing a try, even if just a little test piece. :) Note that plastics are a lot cheaper than metals, although
Give me a 3d printer that.... (Score:2)
And where the material cost per item printed is cheap... and I mean cheap... like cheap as in cheap as dirt, cheap.
And I'll happily throw down a thousand bucks for something like that.
HEY NOTCH!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
The killer app for a commodity 3D printer would be a MineCraft-like interface. I was talking to my teenage kids and their friends about the 3D printer that sits unused in their school lab, and they all complained that the software was incomprehensible. But since they all create amazing structures in MineCraft, I suggested the obvious.... the idea of a crafting UI for 3D design had them jumping up and down yelling “HELL YES we would use that to build amazing things.”
Notch? Are you busy just now? Don't you have some spare cash and free time?
Howzabout a 3D crafting UI that looks like a holodeck room and adopts the standard controls for MineCraft to frame up basic block structures, plus some of the better mod controls for curves, smoothing, and multi-size blocks?
User scenarios would follow something like this: .... and finally printing.
- Adjust the size of the room you want to work in,
- Rough design using building blocks off the hot bar,
- managing multiple materials or colors from the inventory,
- more complex design with other objects (maybe compound objects) from the crafting table,
- fill/smoothing/spanning following the methods/controls of some of the better mods,
- view/flythrough, save functions, import, export, etc...,
-
I’d buy it. Seriously, I would plunk down a grand for the hardware in a heartbeat if the design GUI was fun to use. :)
(And HP needs to get on the stick, if they want to extend their "ink" market...
NOTCH!!! Seriously, you need to get on this.
DREMEL!!!?! Seriously, you need to talk to Notch.
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Some 3d printing services can print ceramics [materialise.com] ;)