Tag Archives: kickstarter
$200 MakiBox 3D Printer Competes at the Low End Market
$200 MakiBox 3D Printer is the Cheapest on the Market
The MakiBox 3D printer is the creation of 37-year-old Jon Buford, founder of Hong Kong-based startup Makible. Buford launched the company with $50,000 in seed funding and a round of pre-orders from a crowdfunding campaign. Makible’s 2013 goal is to hit $2 to $3 million in revenue.
Targeting Cost over Scale
MakiBox is attacking the low end of the market. While leading desktop 3D printers from MakerBot and 3D Systems range from $1,700 to $2,200, there has been a price war at the low end among dozens of Kickstarter projects and RepRap innovations. Makible is possibly the lowest priced 3D printer in the market.
To reduce the cost, the MakiBox is a smaller 3D printer. But it can still print objects as large as 14 iPhone 5s stacked in two columns.
A Visit to Makible in Hong Kong
Our friends at Hack Things are traveling in China this week, and paid a visit to the team building the MakiBox, a $200 3D printer.
Yesterday we dropped in on Elliot and Jon of Makible at their lab in Kwai Hing, Hong Kong, where a team is hard at work making what will likely be the world’s most affordable 3D Printer, the MakiBox. It will launch later this year for just $200 (as a kit).
Why does price matter? To get an idea of cost, at the moment Shapeways charges roughly $3 per cubic centimeter when the plastic itself costs less than $0.05. It wouldn’t take much printing before the Makibox pays itself off. However when you factor in shipping and turnaround time, you see the real advantage of having a desktop printer nearby. Not only that, but low cost itself enables new applications and markets such as in education and makes small batch production more affordable (e.g. it’s more practical to run a farm of 3D printers if the fixed costs are low.)
The video below shows a profile of Buford and Makible.
CC Image by cloneofsnake
Doodle3D Kickstarter Campaign: Design on iPad and 3D Print
Doodle3D: Design on an iPad and press 3D Print
Doodle3D is a new Kickstarter campaign to help kids and adults get creative with 3D printing. Not to be confused with 3Doodler, a recent project that raised over $2MM.
What is Doodle3D?
Doodle3D is a very simple sketching tool enabling everyone to make his own drawing come to life with a 3D-printer. This way people can get familliar with the 3D printing technique not just by seeing how the printer works, but by creating something themselves! And all this without needing any knowledge of difficult 3D design programs. It’ll allow you to create that much more with your 3D printer.
How does it work?
After creating a simple line drawing on an iPad or computer the user presses ‘print’. Layer by layer the printer creates a 3D object from the 2D sketch using plastic. This way you can print out your name, a symbol, just a simple doodle or anything you like within a few minutes.
But there’s more, you can make the 3D object more than just a stack of identical layers by sculpting and rotating the object. This way you can make a nicely designed 3D object without needing to make complicated blueprints! Works great for sharing your new 3D printer with the family!
Why are we doing this?
Although low-cost 3D printers are quickly becoming more available, low-entry barrier software is still quite uncommon. Even though 3D design programs are getting more user-friendly and accessible they still form a major barrier for widespread use of this technology.
The Doodle3D software is created by Rick Companje who works at FabLab Amersfoort and is a proud owner of a 3D printer. The idea of Doodle3D came forth out of his personal experience with the entry barriers of 3D design programs.
Doodle3D WiFi Box
The Doodle3D WiFi Box is a WiFi device connecting your iPad/iPhone/laptop or other devices to your 3D printer. Simply connect the 3D printer (currently Ultimaker, open-source MakerBots, Printrbot ) to the USB port of the Doodle3D box, connect to the WiFi network and start sketching and printing in 3D.
Below is the video of the Kickstarter campaign. Doodle 3D has raised just over half of their $50,000 goal with 33 days to go.
Top 3D Printing News Last Week: Cube, iPhone, Mars, Prosthetic Face
3D Printing News
A roundup of the top 3D printing news from April 1 to April 7:
- 3D Printing on Asteroids and Mars (Video)
- The Crowd Loves 3D Printing! Kickstarter 3D Printing Summary
Get your exclusive 15% discount to the Inside 3D Printing conference with discount code PRINT.
The Crowd Loves 3D Printing! Kickstarter 3D Printing Summary
Kickstarter 3D Printing
This post is courtesy of Internet of things blog Hack Things.
The crowdfunding world loves 3D printing. 4 of the top 10 all-time Kickstarter technology projects are 3D printers: Form1, 3D Doodler, Printrbot and the RoBo 3D printer. And there have been many other successful 3D printer campaigns as well. Here is a Kickstarter 3D printing summary.
It’s been a good week for 3D printers and related paraphernalia. Joe interviewed the guys working on the Photon 3D Scanner earlier this week. Since then they’ve hit their Indiegogo campaign goal (congratulations!).
At $450 fully assembled, the RigidBot is at the extreme inexpensive end of the spectrum for 3D Printers, but with capabilities and build volume usually reserved for much pricier machines.
The Filastruder turns plastic pellets into ready-to-use ABS or PLA plastic filament. Much like ink for traditional printers, one of the big hidden costs of operating a 3D printer is the plastic. But while the filament runs $40 or more for a 1kg spool, the pellets only cost a couple bucks. The Filastruder itself is $300, so it would pay off pretty fast.
The 3D Refiner is a simple device to get a high quality finished product out of even lower resolution 3D printing. By smoothing out the layers of a 3D printed object the Refiner leaves you with a perfectly polished final part.
Kickstarter’s stated mission is to help bring creative projects to life, so I guess it’s not too surprising that the community is eager to fund tools like these for making stuff.
We tend to assume that only a small number of dedicated hobbyists actually buy these things, but the success of so many different campaigns demonstrates that there’s actually a broad and healthy appetite. Home 3D printing is already more mainstream than you may have thought.
Via Hack Things.
IBM Sees Exponential Growth of 3D Printing Industry
More than just a tool, 3D printing is an emerging ecosystem.
– Paul Brody, IBM on the exponential growth of the 3D printing industry
At the Siemens Global Innovation Summit in Phoenix, IBM’s Paul Brody gave a look at how manufacturing transformation is changing the traditional rules of product design and development.
Brody highlighted 3 technologies: 3D printing, intelligent robotics, and open-source engineering.
On 3D printing, he discussed key trends:
- 3D printing is rapidly achieving levels of performance required to be production-ready
- 3D printing is already used in production for medical devices and aerospace
- Performance is improving year on year
- At lower volumes, unit costs are competitive with machining and plastic injection molding
He also dove into trends on open-source and crowdsourcing, asserting that 80% of consumers told IBM they are willing to help enterprises develop their products. Brody claimed, “Accept their help or see them build your competition on Kickstarter.”
IBM had partnered with The Economist to analyze the growth rate of open-source design repositories, namely Thingiverse, and found that the number of 3D printable items is on an exponential upwards path while complexity as measured by number of parts is on a steady increase.
Paul Brody’s full talk is embedded below and more research from IBM is available here.
