IEEE Spectrum September, 2010 - 23

hands on
3-d PrinterS
PrOliferate

printers, this is not one of them.
And although the fully assembled
machines have established a strong
But desktop manufacturing
reputation for reliability, do-it-yourselfers
isn't yet ready for your desk
must beware the 3-D equivalent of the
paper jam, which often involves scattered
blobs of solidified plastic, smoking circuit
boards, or half-melted motor mounting
or years, visionary engineers
brackets. Internet forums and builder
have been touting the idea of
blogs are full of stories about hours spent
a cheap box about the size of
rebuilding extruders, days tweaking
a microwave oven that could build
the alignment of build platforms, and
arbitrary solid objects out of plastic,
ceramics, metal, ice, and even living cells. nights rewriting the software that
"slices" designs into layers that can be
During most of the 20-plus-year
built up on top of one another without
history of 3-D printing, "cheap" has
drooping or warping or overtaxing
been a distant vision, with industrial
rapid-prototyping machines going for
anywhere from US $15 000 to over
$1 000 000. That number started to
drop precipitously in 2007, with 3-D-
printer designs from RepRap and Fab@
Home that could be built for $500 to
$2000 in materials (depending on what
materials you wanted to print and how
good you were at scrounging parts).
This spring, 2-D printer giant HewlettPackard jumped on the moderateprice bandwagon, announcing it
would introduce HP-branded 3-D
printers (actually built by Stratasys) in
Europe for €13 500, or about $17 500.
PART SOLUTION: make small plastic parts
If the price of a new compact car
on your own with a 3-D printer, such as Hp's
is more than you or your boss would
[above right]. photos: hewlett-paCkarD
like to spend, New York City start-up
Makerbot Industries offers a small
a printer's tiny CPU. There is even a
RepRap-derived printer kit for about
cottage industry of higher-strength spare
$900. British RepRap parts supplier
parts for the kit components that are
Bits From Bytes sells parts for a rather
most likely to fail. If atoms are indeed the
larger, reportedly more reliable unit
new bits, as the futurati have declared,
for £750 (about $1200) and offers fully
then consider what the world will be
assembled machines for $3000 and up.
But what are these machines actually like when mechanical objects are as
good for? PR representatives for HP and buggy as the typical piece of software.
Indeed, at the hacker level, the most
Stratasys make it clear that their new
popular print runs seem to be 3-D
machines are for mechanical engineers
printer parts. If you want something
and designers to make mock-ups
built for use, you might have better
and prototypes of new ideas (and for
luck shipping your design to one of
educators teaching the next generation,
the rapid-fabrication services that
who will likely work in a world where
3-D fabrication is commonplace), but not have sprung up all over the world.
But Ian Adkins, technical director
for consumers: Despite HP's reputation
of Bits From Bytes, views things a little
for building high-end consumer

F

spectrum.ieee.org

differently: Engineers, hackers, and educators have purchased thousands of the
company's kits-initial production of the
new fully assembled model is fully spoken for-and he is happy to report that
at least some of his customers are building actual products as well as prototypes
and models. If your annual production
of any particular plastic bit is only a few
hundred pieces, he says, the cost of a
3-D printer can be a fraction of the setup
costs for machining or injection molding.
And if tinkering is part of the
attraction, you'll join thousands of other
hackers who are getting the design
of extruders, construction platforms,
structural frames, controller boards, and
other parts just right. Yours could be the
innovation that makes cheap fabrication
a turnkey process for the rest of us.
-Paul Wallich

3-D printers, kits, and parts
http://www.bitsfrombytes.com
http://www.makerbot.com
http://www.makergear.com
Manufacturers of 3-D
printing equipment
http://www.stratasys.com
http://www.zcorp.com
http://www.objet.com
http://www.3dsystems.com
Fab services
http://www.shapeways.com
http://www.redeyeondemand.com
Open-source design repository
http://www.thingiverse.com
Ongoing development
http://www.fabathome.org
http://www.reprap.org
SEptEmbEr 2010 * iEEE SpEctrum * NA

23
http://www.bitsfrombytes.com http://www.makerbot.com http://www.makergear.com http://www.stratasys.com http://www.zcorp.com http://www.objet.com http://www.3dsystems.com http://www.shapeways.com http://www.redeyeondemand.com http://www.thingiverse.com http://www.fabathome.org http://www.reprap.org http://spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2010
