“We designed the Deltaprintr to be simple without sacrificing anything.” — Deltaprintr team

Deltaprintr is a new desktop 3D printer concept that is targeting a retail price of under $500. Created by a team of college students, the savings come from a desire to simplify, not limit, capabilities.

“The project’s inception occurred when I had built a RepRap for our University due to limited availability of funds at the time,” said Shai Schechter, the tech guru behind Deltaprintr, in an interview with On 3D Printing. “After noticing 3D printing’s potential in the classroom and rising demand from fellow college friends, we decided to make our own 3D printer that not only those who can afford to spend more than $1,000 on their printer can buy, but college students as well.”

The team began working on their desktop 3D printer in May and are in the process of finalizing production costs. Schechter said proudly, “we are currently on track to sell at retail under $500.”

The Deltaprintr Team

The founding Deltaprintr team is composed of electrical and mechanical engineers, finance, and a graphic designer. But there is also a great response from the community, Schechter explained, “with a lot of positive feedback and a lot of anxious people waiting for us to launch.”

Desktop 3D printer leader MakerBot, sellers of the $2,200 Replicator 2 desktop 3D printer, was recently acquired by Stratasys for $403 million. Perhaps this team can strike gold with their more affordable design.

The company has launched teaser videos on YouTube and high quality images of its 3D printer. Below is an image gallery and their teaser video.

See Deltaprintr at Maker Faire and on Kickstarter

Deltaprintr will be exhibiting at the World Maker Faire this September 21-22 in NY.

Schechter tells us they are also planning on launching a Kickstarter campaign sometime in October or November. Stay tuned here for more news on Deltaprintr.

Learn more at Deltaprintr.com.

Crowdfunding Campaign to End Manual Polishing for 3D Printing

One of the less publicized aspects of 3D printing, specifically FDM, is the tedious work required after you press “print” with your MakerBot, Printrbot, Ultimaker, or any other 3D printer. Every 3D printer has a defined resolution, which is the thickness of each layer. Typical desktop 3D printers have a resolution of around 100 to 200 microns. The result looks like the image below, visible horizontal lines in the finished product.

To smooth out these lines, advanced 3D printing enthusiasts typically use a sanding technique followed by polishing. Remember, with many desktop 3D printers, the material used is ABS plastic. It is soft enough to smooth out, but requires this manual effort.

Introducing The Touch-Up

3D Customization Co. has developed a product that employs a new technique for smoothing and finishing 3D prints without the manual effort. The product is called The Touch-Up, and 3D Customization Co. has launched an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to raise $5,000.

We interviewed CEO Westley Harrell about The Touch-Up.

On 3D Printing: What is The Touch-Up?

Westley Harrell: The Touch-Up is a product used to smooth and polish rough edges due to the 3D Printing process. Achieve amazing results using various print layers. Imagine a finish you can see yourself in! Literally! Stop wasting time hand sanding and hand polishing your 3D printed ABS models. Let The Touch-Up do it for you! This product allows you to get professional looking models faster by letting The Touch-Up smooth your print for you while another model prints. We found that when using MakerBot’s ABS filament, we were able to get faster polishing times with a great overall consistency with each model polished. (Same filament used in our video and pictures)

I used to spend a lot of time finishing my models after they were printed to get a really clean and smooth surface. I tried different techniques from spray enamel to dipping the part in different chemicals. It took months until I figured out the best method for polishing 3D printed ABS models. That was to submerse the ABS model in Acetone vapor. From that came the idea of vapor sanding and The Touch-Up was conceived.

Anyone who uses ABS to 3D Print will find The Touch-Up a great addition to their 3D Printing Arsenal. We made it easy to use and easy to clean so anyone who 3D Prints could use it.

On 3D Printing: Why are you turning to IndieGoGo for funding?

Westley Harrell: We chose IndieGoGo because we wanted to make The Touch-Up available to anyone, anywhere. This campaign also helps provide funding for upgrades and will help us move forward with this product. Also through this 30-day campaign we will be able to identify the need for this product, and determine how much time should be invested in bringing this product forward to consumers in the future. This is just the first project we are bringing to the public. We want to identify which product is in the highest demand.

Origins of Acetone Vapor Bath in the Maker Community

While The Touch-Up is the first commercialized product to use an acetone vapor bath, the origins of this technique look to be from the Maker community. In February 2013, Austin Wilson posted on his blog about a new technique that he and his friend Neil Underwood were developing to polish 3D printed objects using acetone vapor baths.

Neil also posted his results on the RepRap blog. Neil explained his inspiration:

Treating ABS parts with acetone is almost as old as RepRap itself, but usually this has involved either dipping the part into liquid acetone, which causes white streaks in the parts, or brushing the acetone onto the part with a slurry mix, which can work very well but tends to be a messy process.

I have seen several setups out there, one by the Solidoodle Folks that involved a deep fryer, ice, tubing, and a candy thermometer, or completely passive systems that just used unheated acetone like TBuser of Makerbot did.

Unlike the other experiments, Neil and Austin heated the acetone in a closed chamber. The results were impressive.

In March, Wired magazine published a feature about Neil and Austin and their vapor bath technique. With the additional exposure of their approach came a new caveat:

Anyone interested in trying this should take care. Wilson says points out that acetone isn’t especially dangerous, but it has to be handled carefully since the vapor can catch fire if exposed to sparks or flames.

If you like this idea and want to help fund the first commercial product to use acetone vapor baths to polish 3D printed objects, go check out The Touch-Up at IndieGoGo.

3D Printers for Peace

In the wake of the Cody Wilson’s 3D printed gun fiasco, Michigan Tech is launching a 3D printing contest for good.

Below are the details of the contest and how to enter.

3D printing is changing the world. Unfortunately, the only thing many people know about 3D printing is that it can be used to make guns. We want to celebrate designs that will make lives better, not snuff them out.

What is the Printers for Peace Contest?

We are challenging the 3D printing community to design things that advance the cause of peace. This is an open-ended contest, but if you’d like some ideas, ask yourself what Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, or Ghandi would make if they’d had access to 3D printing.

• low-cost medical devices
• tools to help pull people out of poverty
• designs that can reduce racial conflict
• objects to improve energy efficiency or renewable energy sources to reduce wars over oil
• tools that would reduce military conflict and spending while making us all safer and more secure
• things that boost sustainable economic development (e.g. designs for appropriate technology in the developing world to reduce scarcity)

1st Prize

Fully assembled, open-source Type A Machines Series 1 3D Printer
The Series 1 recently won best in class in the Make: Ultimate Guide to 3-D Printing. It has a 9-by-9-by-9-inch build volume, prints at 90mm/sec in PLA, ABS and PVA with 0.1mm resolution.

2nd Prize

Michigan Tech’s MOST version of the RepRap Prusa Mendel open-source 3D printer kit
The RepRap can be built in a weekend. It has a 7.8–by-7.8-by-6.8-inch build volume on a heated bed, prints comfortably at 80 mm/sec ABS, 45 mm/sec PLA, HDPE and PVA with 0.1 mm resolution.

Enter the Contest

Go to the Michigan Tech website to enter the contest.

Image by snapies_gi used under Creative Commons license.

$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

In this must-see extensive infographic, the emerging 3D printing revolution is profiled and detailed. Who are the players? Where is the industry going? Will there be a legitimate marketplace or will pirated 3D printed goods emerge? It’s all here.

Via: Newark and Farnell, orignal designers.