#micro 3d

Micro 3D Yazıcı Son Kullanıcı için Geliyor

Micro 3D Yazıcı, 3 boyutlu yazıcı sektörüne bomba gibi bir giriş yapmayı planlıyor

Son dönemin en çok öne çıkan teknoloji ürünlerinden biri olan 3D yazıcılar, çok sayıdaki alanda kullanılmaya devam ediyor. Sağlık sektöründen, teknoloji dünyasına kadar geniş bir yelpazede hizmet veren 3 boyutlu yazıcılar şimdiye kadar genellikle benzeri mecralarda kullanılırken, evlerde hizmete girme şansını pek…

Whilst on the BBC website today I noticed a ‘related’ article on a Kickstarter that had achieved its goal in a few short minutes. Now, I’ve heard about my fair share of ridiculous and outright fraudulent Kickstarters, and I view pretty much everything on there with a pinch of salt. Even more outrageous was the title. a $300 (£178) 3D printer? It couldn’t be.

So I headed over to Micro 3D’s Kickstarter page to have a look for myself.

Billing itself as ‘The First Truly Consumer 3D Printer’, the Micro 3D is a literal cube weighing 1kg and clocking in at 7.3 inches each side. It looks a bit like an IKEA magazine table, if this was IKEA in the 2030′s and all your furniture could fabricate objects out of thin air. The glossy advert shows a timelapse print of a vase, helpfully overcut with the words ‘looks like magic’ and a film of a woman cutting cookies with a mould she’s just printed, overcut with ‘a part of everyone’s lives’. So far, a very slick marketing video. Looking closely the models are made from two different kinds of plastic (PLA or ABS) and aren’t hugely finely printed. However, the filaments used for ‘ink’ go a lot further, the electricity consumption is lower, and of course, this is a factor for its cheapness. The modelmaking interface is also designed to be simple to use, fitting in with their goal to have ‘a 3D printer in every home’. The entire branding strategy seems to be just that – a simple, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin printer useful for a family, not a tech aerodynamics startup in Sheffield – more the humble inkjet rather than the gargantuan screen printing press.

However, I spoke to a friend studying Engineering and they immediately identified a few key problems. 3D printers need to be calibrated and tuned regularly for use, and the 3D micro provides no information about its auto calibration. Plus, the 7.3 inch siding doesn’t provide an optimal area for printing – very conspicuously, the models in its advert are small things, like shower clips and toy part replacements. But apart from the quality of the printer itself, quibbles about the resolution and printing area are just industry-standard gripes, aren’t they?

Even though I know how great a deal a 3D printer under £200 is, I still wouldn’t back this even though I were a student. There seem to be a fair few unanswered questions about the quality or actual usage of this printer, as is common with a lot of first wave rollouts of shiny concepts -just look at the coverage of smartwatches, for example. But I’m incredibly excited. I grew up reading Neal Stephenson, Aldous Huxley and Scott Westerfeld, whose tales of 3D printer-like magical machines of plenty seemed like the ultimate marker of the future. Though 3D printing is already incredibly useful in fields such as medical science and product testing, for the average punter it’s little more than a curiosity. Perhaps with the success of the Micro 3D’s funding — $50,000 in a few minutes and over a million dollars a day in — people will see that the general public are finally ready for an ubiquitous, small making machine, as useful as a coffee machine or printer/photocopier. The flashy 3D printing revolution will be making more progress when everyone really does have a 3D printer of their own, even if it can only make small, rough pieces instead of the two thousand dollar Foodini, a printer surely only of use for gimmick-prone chefs.

At any rate, 3D printers can only be a good thing. As the market widens, the dream of being able to print a copy of my own brain gets ever closer.

3D Printing and the Manufacturing Revolution

  Digital technology is now integrated with everything. We’ve seen it in our businesses, our economy and how we socialize and relax. Now, with the rise of 3D printing technology, that very same digital revolution is sparking the powder keg of another metamorphosis.

Welcome to the Manufacturing Revolution

People are saying that 2014 will be the year of the 3D printer.

3D printing refers to taking…