Counting Down the 3D Printer Revolution
Every week seems to bring a story about a cool new 3D hack or another discussion about how the printing revolution has begun. But what’s really going on with 3D printers?
An exact description of 3D printing is somewhat elusive, because several methods may be used. But most 3D printers stack thin layers of material to form a 3D object in much the same way that a dot-matrix printer creates an image on a page.
Although the process has been around since the early 1990s, until recently it had a relatively low profile. In part, this was due to the five- or six-figure prices that early 3D printers commanded; it also reflected the low guality of the objects produced.
But in the past few years, prices have dropped to a more reasonable level: £1,000 to £3,000 is normal, with the cheapest model, MakerBot’s Cupcake CNC, costing just $650 in the US. The printers’ greater affordability, along with the increasing number of options available for home 3D-printing kits, has helped take the technology out of specialised industrial use and put it into the hands of geeks and hackers across the country. At the same time, hackers are coming up with components to make the printing process more precise.
But what will it take for 3D printing to make the leap from hacker spaces and geek garages to the average home? A continued reduction in prices, for one thing. Jeff Lipton, the head of Cornell’s Fab@Home 3D Printing project, believes prices will sink further as 3D printers follow the same path that the PC took in its transition from hacker hobby to major tech industry.
“The personal computer revolution moved computers from integrated machines to a combination of standardised components made by dozens of manufacturers,” Lipton said. “We need the 3D printing field to start moving in that direction.”
Coming soon to consumers
But 3D printers need a little more than they now offer to cross over to the average consumer, said IDC printer expert Keith Kmetz. “Right now, I don’t see the ‘ah-ha’ application that’s going to drive lots of adoption, but kind of a ‘that’s interesting/ cool/neat’ response,” he said.
So 3D printing is still looking for its killer hook: an idea with broad enough appeal to capture the attention of the masses. Luckily, a few interesting prospects are already on the table.
The first and most obvious of these is that the hacker movement responsible for bringing the technology to the fore in recent years by lowering prices and offering home 3D-printing kits will continue to expand, bringing it to an evergrowing segment of the population. This seems to be the direction of the MakerBot Industries team, as evidenced by the company’s relatively low-cost 3D printer kits.
In addition to its entry-level Cupcake CNC machine, Makerbot has produced a more-powerful Thing-o-Matic model, which costs just over £1,000 and lets you print larger and more accurate 3D objects.
But rather than resting content with the relatively low cost of its kits, the Makerbot team has also started Thingiverse.com, a site for sharing useful 3D-printable designs.
The site already offers a plethora of useful designs for downloading and printing out on a Makerbot or other 3D printer. The designs range from a printable pair of glasses to a mini Rubik’s Cube and even replacement parts and upgrades for the 3D printers themselves.
Printing materials
One of the chief limitations of the Makerbot – and most other home 3D printers on the market – involves the materials they require for printing. Although 3D printing methods permit dozens of different types of materials to be used, from metals to ceramics, 3D printing at home rarely uses anything but plastics. Qualities such as pliability and a low melting point make plastic a great 3D-printing material, but those same qualities make it unsuitable for such end products as a microwave-safe plate.
The technologies required for non-plastic 3D printing remain out of the reach of most consumers, but a number of online services have popped up in recent years offering the printing of any 3D model you upload to them, in various materials. One of the most prominent of these services is Shapeways.com, a 3D-printing service launched in 2008. In addition to plastics, Shapeways provides 3D printing of models in steel, sandstone and glass; it’s also recently added an option to print your designs in silver. Shapeways produces the printed 3D object, then posts it to you.
These personal fabrication services have been growing increasingly elaborate. Recently Ponoko.com, which previously specialised in laser cutting, launched a service that prints in multiple materials and also now offers to integrate electronics into your 3D printed objects. It bills its service as the Ponoko Personal Factory, a boutique manufacturing operation for creating made-to-order electronics.
No material is suitable for every purpose, and some objects need more than one kind of material. Ideally, 3D printers would be able to work with multiple materials simultaneously, so they could create complex objects without requiring any separate construction. In fact, multimaterial printers already exist. The Connex family from Objet is one example. However, they are currently restricted to the commercial sector and are extremely expensive.
Of course, multimaterial printing needn’t remain beyond the budgets of home users forever. Lipton and the Fab@Home project are working to bring multimaterial printing into the home, but he doesn’t think this development will serve as the industry’s killer app. Instead, Lipton sees mainstream access to multimaterial printing as being comparable to the development of integrated processors for personal computers.
“Just as the integrated processor was needed before personal computing became feasible, multimaterial printing is going to enable the killer app,” Lipton said. “If you look at personal computing, the killer app was video games, and no one could have predicted that from the processor.
“Everyone knows that you will own one or more personal fabricators, but no one knows what you will use them for. You find out the killer app only once the machine is in enough hands and people start doing cool and weird things with it.”
Lipton suggests food printing or using 3D printing in the classroom as possibilities, but it may also be that 3D printing’s killer app isn’t even on our collective radar yet.
Lego leads the way
3D printing using plastics and steel may not be ready for the mainstream just yet, but one material has already proved its worth, at least in the hacker community: Lego.
The MakerLegoBot printer is made from 2,400 Lego bricks and uses a Java application. You submit a MLCAD file (that’s Mike’s Lego Computer-Aided Design) of what you want to ‘print’ to the Java application, and it will convert the file into something the printer can build (out of Lego, of course). The instructions are sent via USB.
The printer base rotates in order to build the file layer by layer and make objects up to 12 bricks tall. The big grey wall on the back is for storing all its bricks, ready for building. It works with 1×2, 2×2, 3×2, 4×2 and 8×2 Lego bricks so far.
The creator also points out that it took so many bricks to complete this project that he ran out at one point (the good people at Lego sent him additional bricks to finish it off).
Check out the video of the MakerLegoBot (tinyurl.com/37aqk72) and, if you want to give it a go, the instructions are also available on the MakerLegoBot website (battlebricks.com/makerlegobot).
Even though you can’t do any of your serious work with the printer, at least making things like houses or spaceships with your Lego blocks is less time-consuming.
Every week seems to bring a story about a cool new 3D hack or another discussion about how the printing revolution has begun. But what’s really going on with 3D printers?
An exact description of 3D printing is somewhat elusive, because several methods may be used. But most 3D printers stack thin layers of material to form a 3D object in much the same way that a dot-matrix printer creates an image on a page.
Although the process has been around since the early 1990s, until recently it had a relatively low profile. In part, this was due to the five- or six-figure prices that early 3D printers commanded; it also reflected the low guality of the objects produced.
But in the past few years, prices have dropped to a more reasonable level: £1,000 to £3,000 is normal, with the cheapest model, MakerBot’s Cupcake CNC, costing just $650 in the US. The printers’ greater affordability, along with the increasing number of options available for home 3D-printing kits, has helped take the technology out of specialised industrial use and put it into the hands of geeks and hackers across the country. At the same time, hackers are coming up with components to make the printing process more precise.
But what will it take for 3D printing to make the leap from hacker spaces and geek garages to the average home? A continued reduction in prices, for one thing. Jeff Lipton, the head of Cornell’s Fab@Home 3D Printing project, believes prices will sink further as 3D printers follow the same path that the PC took in its transition from hacker hobby to major tech industry.
“The personal computer revolution moved computers from integrated machines to a combination of standardised components made by dozens of manufacturers,” Lipton said. “We need the 3D printing field to start moving in that direction.”
Coming soon to consumers
But 3D printers need a little more than they now offer to cross over to the average consumer, said IDC printer expert Keith Kmetz. “Right now, I don’t see the ‘ah-ha’ application that’s going to drive lots of adoption, but kind of a ‘that’s interesting/ cool/neat’ response,” he said.
So 3D printing is still looking for its killer hook: an idea with broad enough appeal to capture the attention of the masses. Luckily, a few interesting prospects are already on the table.
The first and most obvious of these is that the hacker movement responsible for bringing the technology to the fore in recent years by lowering prices and offering home 3D-printing kits will continue to expand, bringing it to an evergrowing segment of the population. This seems to be the direction of the MakerBot Industries team, as evidenced by the company’s relatively low-cost 3D printer kits.
In addition to its entry-level Cupcake CNC machine, Makerbot has produced a more-powerful Thing-o-Matic model, which costs just over £1,000 and lets you print larger and more accurate 3D objects.
But rather than resting content with the relatively low cost of its kits, the Makerbot team has also started Thingiverse.com, a site for sharing useful 3D-printable designs.
The site already offers a plethora of useful designs for downloading and printing out on a Makerbot or other 3D printer. The designs range from a printable pair of glasses to a mini Rubik’s Cube and even replacement parts and upgrades for the 3D printers themselves.
Printing materials
One of the chief limitations of the Makerbot – and most other home 3D printers on the market – involves the materials they require for printing. Although 3D printing methods permit dozens of different types of materials to be used, from metals to ceramics, 3D printing at home rarely uses anything but plastics. Qualities such as pliability and a low melting point make plastic a great 3D-printing material, but those same qualities make it unsuitable for such end products as a microwave-safe plate.
The technologies required for non-plastic 3D printing remain out of the reach of most consumers, but a number of online services have popped up in recent years offering the printing of any 3D model you upload to them, in various materials. One of the most prominent of these services is Shapeways.com, a 3D-printing service launched in 2008. In addition to plastics, Shapeways provides 3D printing of models in steel, sandstone and glass; it’s also recently added an option to print your designs in silver. Shapeways produces the printed 3D object, then posts it to you.
These personal fabrication services have been growing increasingly elaborate. Recently Ponoko.com, which previously specialised in laser cutting, launched a service that prints in multiple materials and also now offers to integrate electronics into your 3D printed objects. It bills its service as the Ponoko Personal Factory, a boutique manufacturing operation for creating made-to-order electronics.
No material is suitable for every purpose, and some objects need more than one kind of material. Ideally, 3D printers would be able to work with multiple materials simultaneously, so they could create complex objects without requiring any separate construction. In fact, multimaterial printers already exist. The Connex family from Objet is one example. However, they are currently restricted to the commercial sector and are extremely expensive.
Of course, multimaterial printing needn’t remain beyond the budgets of home users forever. Lipton and the Fab@Home project are working to bring multimaterial printing into the home, but he doesn’t think this development will serve as the industry’s killer app. Instead, Lipton sees mainstream access to multimaterial printing as being comparable to the development of integrated processors for personal computers.
“Just as the integrated processor was needed before personal computing became feasible, multimaterial printing is going to enable the killer app,” Lipton said. “If you look at personal computing, the killer app was video games, and no one could have predicted that from the processor.
“Everyone knows that you will own one or more personal fabricators, but no one knows what you will use them for. You find out the killer app only once the machine is in enough hands and people start doing cool and weird things with it.”
Lipton suggests food printing or using 3D printing in the classroom as possibilities, but it may also be that 3D printing’s killer app isn’t even on our collective radar yet.
Lego leads the way
3D printing using plastics and steel may not be ready for the mainstream just yet, but one material has already proved its worth, at least in the hacker community: Lego.
The MakerLegoBot printer is made from 2,400 Lego bricks and uses a Java application. You submit a MLCAD file (that’s Mike’s Lego Computer-Aided Design) of what you want to ‘print’ to the Java application, and it will convert the file into something the printer can build (out of Lego, of course). The instructions are sent via USB.
The printer base rotates in order to build the file layer by layer and make objects up to 12 bricks tall. The big grey wall on the back is for storing all its bricks, ready for building. It works with 1×2, 2×2, 3×2, 4×2 and 8×2 Lego bricks so far.
The creator also points out that it took so many bricks to complete this project that he ran out at one point (the good people at Lego sent him additional bricks to finish it off).
Check out the video of the MakerLegoBot (tinyurl.com/37aqk72) and, if you want to give it a go, the instructions are also available on the MakerLegoBot website (battlebricks.com/makerlegobot).
Even though you can’t do any of your serious work with the printer, at least making things like houses or spaceships with your Lego blocks is less time-consuming.
