Tag Archives: Form Labs

3D Printing at CES 2013 Roundup: MakerBot, Stratasys and More

CES 2013 was shaping up to the the year of 3D printing with 8 major exhibitors showing of 3D printers, 3D printing marketplaces, and more. We visited the booths, heard the announcements, and talked to the teams. Here is our recap.

MakerBot Has Several Major Announcements

CES 2013 MakerBot 3D Printing Bre Pettis

Last year, MakerBot won Best of CES 2012 in the Emerging Tech category. We think MakerBot deserves an award this year again for the biggest announcements. In our exclusive footage of Bre Pettis, the MakerBot CEO revealed the new MakerBot Replicator 2X “experimental” 3D printer, announced changes to the Thingiverse API, and talked about the plans for “bot farms.”

CES 2013 MakerBot 3D Printers

Stratasys and Objet

CES 2013 Stratasys Objet Booth

Recently merged Stratasys and Objet were exhibiting at CES 2013, showing Mojo 3D printers in action.

3D Systems Wins Best Emerging Tech with New Cubify 3D Printer

CES 2013 Cubify CubeX 3D Printer

3D Systems had announced that they would bring the next generation 3D printing showcase to CES, and they did by introducing two new printers.

Above photo courtesy of core77:

This year they pulled the sheets off of not one, but two machines: Their updated Cube 2, a faster and more accurate update to the original, and their larger CubeX, which can print “basketball size” (10.75″ x 10.75″ x 9.5″) in both ABS and PLA.

The Rest

What else did you see at CES? Write your thoughts in the comments!

 

Our Detailed Guide to CES 2013: Welcome to the Year of 3D Printing!

CES 3D Printing 2013

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opens this week in Las Vegas. This year will include over 20,000 products from more than 3,000 exhibitors.

CBS News highlighted 3D printing as one of the key trends at CES this year, along with Ultra HD and mobile computing.

MarketBot, 3D Systems Corp and Sculpteo are among a handful of companies that make 3D printers that will be showing off new products at CES 2013, Scientific American reports. As home 3D printers become more affordable, the community of enthusiasts also continues to grow. Cracking the mass consumer market may be the next step for manufacturers of 3D printers.

“The consumer space is a key market for 3D and small steps have been made in this space via hobbyists and model makers in arts and craft projects and self-employed designers,” Accenture senior executive Kumu Puri writes in a blog post for Forbes.

 

Here is our list of the top exhibitors showing their latest developments in 3D printing.

3D Systems

Since 1986 3D Systems has transformed entire industries with powerful 3D content-to-print tools. The company intends to democratize access to affordable 3D content-to-print solutions for professionals and consumers. Launched last year at CES, Cubify is 3D System’s consumer zone (www.cubify.com).

Booths: LVCC, Central Hall - 15447, Venetian Ballroom - 71003

See our coverage on 3D Systems.

3D Printed Guitar by 3D Systems

 

Afinia

Afinia will be showing it’s award winning 3D printer, and full line of ABS filament. Our H series 3D printer was voted “Best Overall Experience” in the recent make magazine 3D printer shootout. Live 3D printing demonstrations will be held continuously during the day.

Booth: LVCC, South Hall 4 - 36388

See our coverage on Afinia.

Afinia H-Series 3D Printer

 

Delta Micro Factory Corp.

Maker of popular personal 3D printer, Up! Series.

Booth: Venetian Ballroom - 70524

See our coverage on UP! 3D printers.

 

Formlabs

The Form 1 is the first truly high-resolution, low-cost desktop 3D printer, achieving professional quality at a price individual designers and engineers can afford. Our technology fills the gap between low-quality hobbyist machines and high-end printers that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Booth: LVCC, South Hall 4 - 35160

See our coverage on Formlabs.

3D Printing Broad Horizons

 

Kraftwurx

Kraftwurx is the worlds original platform for 3D printing in the cloud. Showcase, buy, sell and create virtually anything you can imagine in 70 materials and worldwide shipping. Based in Houston, TX, our mission is to empower everyone for custom-made goods and empower manufacturing to deliver it.

Booth: Venetian, Lvl 3 - 74411

See our coverage on Kraftwurx.

Solar Photovoltaic Film

 

Makerbot Industries

MakerBot® is a global leader in desktop 3D printing with engineers, entrepreneurs, and people who just like to make things. Honored as Popular Mechanics “Overall Winner” for best 3D printer, Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2012, and Fast Company 2012 Innovation by Design Awardee.

Booth: LVCC, South Hall 3 - 32025

See our coverage on MakerBot.

MakerBot GrabCAD 3D Printing Challenge

 

Sculpteo

Sculpteo offers a fully online 3D printing service – from the upload of your 3D model to the final object – designed to make this new technology easy and accessible to all. In addition to affiliates, Sculpteo, has its own 3D printing facilities in France for R&D purpose.

Booth: LVCC, South Hall 2 - 26111

See our coverage on Sculpteo.

3D Printing Infographic Future of Manufacturing

 

Stratasys, Ltd.

Stratasys is a leading manufacturer of 3D printers and production systems for prototyping and manufacturing applications, recently merging with Objet to create leader in 3D printing and direct digital manufacturing.

Booth: LVCC, South Hall 4 - 35463

See our coverage on Stratasys and Objet.

Stratasys Mojo 3D Printing System

 

You can setup your own CES itinerary at the MyCES website.

See you at CES!

Video: Broad Horizons for 3D Printing – RepRap, MakerBot, and Beyond

3D Printing Broad Horizons

The video below explores the evolution and future potential of 3D printing.

3D printing technology has come a long way, fast. And after two new product launches 3D printing has stepped firmly into the mainstream consumer market, in the process diverging from some of its early roots. In late September Makerbot released its latest printer, the ‘Replicator 2′, geared less towards the 3D printing enthusiast and more towards the mainstream consumer. They’ve even opened a retail store in Manhattan. And that same week Form Labs debuted their ‘Form 1′ 3D printer which boasts a minimum print resolution of 25 microns. The sleek machine was on display at this year’s Maker Faire.

“We were students at the media lab at MIT and we did a lot of work with personal fabrication tools there. And we’re all designers and engineers ourselves, but we were very frustrated that really, really truly professional high design tools like 3D printing were too expensive, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for the independent professional designer. So we decided to start a company to make the ‘Form 1′ which is the first high-quality, yet affordable and well-designed 3D printer that you can buy,” Form Labs co-founder David Cranor explained at their booth at Maker Faire 2012.

On the other side of the Maker Faire at the ’3D Printer Village’ was a collection of some 30 homebrew 3D printers, products of the RepRap Project, a loose-knit community that pioneered much of 3D printing’s recent revolution. The project’s goal is to develop a 3D printer that can print itself.

John Abella has been hosting the ’3D printer village’ for three years now. His Frankenstein printer, originally a Makerbot ‘Cupcake’, is typical of the RepRap community. RepRap is open-source, which means any designs produced under the project are free to use. That makes finding replacement parts and upgrading parts especially easy.

“Because it’s open source, people were able to take the original designs, improve on them, get electronics made and then sell them really cheaply, twenty, thirty dollars. So you can keep these old machines going even though they’re not supported and original parts aren’t available anymore.”

And then there’s Jordan Miller who is taking advantage of RepRap’s open-source designs to build 3D printers that can be used to create functional vascular structures.

Miller’s method works by having the 3D printer print vasculature models in a sugar-like material which can then be used as a mold for living cells and eventually dissolved. In proof-of-concept experiments blood pumped through the vasculature was able to deliver nutrients and oxygen.

“Instead of starting with a commercial system, like a hundred thousand dollar machine and trying to make it print sugar, we’re trying to start with these open-source printers, this amazing community that we have here at Maker Faire and we’re trying to have this community help this community develop this kind of technology from the ground up. The open source community and science, they’re very compatible. Everything is science is open anyway, so it’s been a good merge of communities.”

As a potential side business, they’re also using the printer to make custom chocolates.

With the release of the closed-source ‘Replicator 2′ Makerbot, largely a product of the RepRap project, is to some degree, turning its back on RepRap and open-source. After all it’s hard to make a profit off of something if the designs are open source. While some may see it as a betrayal Jeff Keegan says he understands why Makerbot did what they did.

“I’m interested in having the essence of open-source not be hurt. So I don’t want to see someone testing to see if they can close something that’s open.”

He insists, however, that it won’t hamper the RepRap project’s goal of developing a self-replicating 3D printer.

Open-source is here already. Other people doing things on the side may cause problems for themselves, but it doesn’t really affect me… I got bigger fish to fry, getting my thing to work better, designing new things for this, I’m happy about that.”