The Best 3D Printers On The Planet

[skinz]

The Best 3D Printers On The Planet

Best 3D Printers - Business Insider

So you've decided to jump into the world of 3D printing. Time to pick out your hardware.

With a number of different companies all hawking their product as the latest and greatest, it can be a bit confusing to know where to start.

The most recent issue of Make Magazine offers detailed reviews on a number of popular models of 3D printers, breaking down each of their strengths and weaknesses.

What's the point of a 3D printer you ask? Well, you may not realize it yet, but printing real-world objects is going to be the next big thing in computing.

So which printer should you buy?

Printrbot

Printrbot is a newer company, but it's already carved out a niche selling what are commonly known to be among the best printers for 3D printing newbies. The Printrbot LC is expandable in every direction, meaning that if you're adventurous enough, you can build it out to print objects as big as you want.

Price: $549

MakerBot

Makerbot has been a driving force in the hobbyist 3D printing world. Its repository of 3D files, Thingiverse, has a hugely active user base where people offer files and ideas to help everyone get the most out of their printers.

Price: $2,199

If ease of use is your priority, get the Afinia H-Series.


This printer ships fully assembled and ready to rock. This is a far cry from most other printers, which often require a bunch of assembly.

Price: $1,499

If speed is your priority, get the Ultimaker.

3D builds can occasionally take a few hours (and sometimes even longer). The Ultimaker, however, makes short, speedy work of most builds while still turning out a quality print.

Price: $1575.24


If reliability is your priority, get a Cube.

Make mercilessly tested the Cube for an entire weekend, and at the end of testing, it was still performing as well as when it had originally started. This is not the case for many other printers, which often required recalibration to keep the quality up.

Price: $1,299


If price is your priority, get a Printrbot Jr.

Printrbot

There's no way you're beating the price tag on the Printrbot Jr. It's tiny, it's portable. and it even runs on battery power for printing objects anywhere you want.

Price: $399


If you want the highest possible print quality, get a Type A Series 1.

The Series 1 can print objects up to 9 cubic inches, which is larger than most competing printers. And the quality of the finished print rated a perfect 5 out of 5.

Price: $1,400


If you want the quietest possible printer, get a Felix 1.0.

Some printers are loud, but the Felix merely whispers as it extrudes plastic into your finished object.

Price: $1,186.05


If you want to rude the cutting edge, get the Form-1.

Kickstarter

Where most printers melt plastic to create their objects, the Form-1 fires a laser at liquid resin to harden it into different shapes using a process called stereo lithography. It produces prints at a much higher resolution than most other printers.

Price: $3,299

Read more: Best 3D Printers - Business Insider

 

[skinz]

10 Actually Useful Things You Can Make With A 3D Printer

The Best 3D Printers On The Planet

Remember how little you missed them when you upgraded to a LaserJet?

Even though we're in a "dot matrix era" of personal 3D printers, there's enough interest to know that they'll continue to be refined and further improved until we enter a LaserJet era.

But a 3D-printed object doesn't have to be pretty to serve a practical purpose.

Here are 10 things you can make on a 3D printer today that are actually somewhat useful.

Read more: Useful 3D Printer Projects - Business Insider

 

[skinz]

3D Printers Can Now Pump Out 30-Round Magazines

A video from Defense Distributed popped up just in time for Barack Obama's momentous address to the nation about, among other things, banning the sale of 30-round magazines.

The video shows a test fire of an assault rifle using a 3D-printed 30-round clip. The capability adds another layer to the loopholes and problems that exist in a 'high-capacity magazine' ban.

The implication is that, as technology becomes more available, it won't be long before regular people can put 30-round magazines in the printing queue next to their TPS reports.

In an Andy Greenberg post on Forbes, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson talks about weapons bans and his polymer, printed 30-round magazine:

Wilson argues that the high capacity magazine ban wouldn’t just be wrong, but also impossible to enforce, as his project aims to show. Even if Defense Distributed’s original goal of printing a gun from scratch remains out of reach, the restrictions on magazine could be far more easily bypassed, he says. “[Lawmakers] are taking a giant step backward, and it makes everything we’ve talked about more practical,” says Wilson. “There’s more opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness, the consequences of our project. I can already print this magazine and show that prohibition has run up against a problem.”

The next best step for the government would be to ban the manufacture of 30-round magazines, but the U.S. already manufactures and exports those by the millions to support American and foreign military demand.

Read more: 3D Printers And High Capacity Magazine Bans - Business Insider

 

[oneman]

We a few 3D printers in our design centre. They work with different materials, one works with sand for casting parts, another uses plastic like material. Their latest one uses a fine powdered aluminium type material which has metal like qualities when finished.

They are pretty amazing and can build impossible things, like a ball in the cage and really detailed parts like working hinges. One the projects that we have been working is with the natural history museum where they have been building model bones from fossils. Another is to build one off spare parts.

There are also some medical applications they are looking at and NASA are also looking at sending one to ISS so they can build their own spare parts.

 

[msrie]

Makes one wonder what they have behind the scenes in the world we do not see.

 

[skinz]

TED 2013: 4D printed objects 'make themselves'

TED 2013: 4D printed objects 'make themselves'


Many are only just getting their heads around the idea of 3D printing but scientists at MIT are already working on an upgrade: 4D printing.

At the TED conference in Los Angeles, architect and computer scientist Skylar Tibbits showed how the process allows objects to self-assemble.

It could be used to install objects in hard-to-reach places such as underground water pipes, he suggested.

It might also herald an age of self-assembling furniture, said experts.
Smart materials

TED fellow Mr Tibbits, from the MIT's (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) self-assembly lab, explained what the extra dimension involved.

"We're proposing that the fourth dimension is time and that over time static objects will transform and adapt," he told the BBC.

The process uses a specialised 3D printer that can create multi-layered materials.

It combines a strand of standard plastic with a layer made from a "smart" material that can absorb water.

The water acts as an energy source for the material to expand once it is printed.

"The rigid material becomes a structure and the other layer is the force that can start bending and twisting it," said Mr Tibbits.

"Essentially the printing is nothing new, it is about what happens after," he added.

Such a process could in future be used to build furniture, bikes, cars and even buildings, he thinks.

For the time being he is seeking a manufacturing partner to explore the innovation.

"We are looking for applications and products that wouldn't be possible without these materials," he added.

"Imagine water pipes that can expand to cope with different capacities or flows and save digging up the street."
Nature's inspiration

Engineering software developer Autodesk, which collaborated on the project, is looking even further into the future.

"Imagine a scenario where you go to Ikea and buy a chair, put it in your room and it self-assembles," said Carlo Olguin, principal research scientist at the software firm.

The 4D printing concept draws inspiration from nature which already has the ability to self-replicate.

"We already have 3D printers that can be injected with stem cells, printing micro slices of liver," Mr Olguin added.

"The idea behind 4D printing is to use the sheer power of biology and modify it. But it is still an elusive goal."

The next stage for the research is to move from printing single strands to sheets and eventually whole structures. And water need not be the process's only energy source.

BBC News - TED 2013: 4D printed objects 'make themselves'
"We could also have heat, vibration and sound," said Mr Tibbits.