Zen newsletter - 3D printing

Could any of the Zen staff here provide a link to the £300 3D printer mentioned in the newsletter, or ask a member of the editorial team to do so?

Many thanks!

Didn't see the letter in question (not a Zen customer), it wasn't one of these devices perchance though was it?

No idea, as they don't mention a model.

"In contrast to early 3D printing machines, which cost around £20,000, the latest model sells at just £300."

the cheapest I can find is £1900+VAT. HP DesignJet 3D is priced POA or lease/hire - although HP have an offer of a complimentary model for evaluation...

So the newsletter implies it is possible to buy a model for £300 - not purchase a kit/components for £300, but "...latest model sells at just £300". I'd love to see the model, and where it is available from. Googling returns nothing - unless its on Page x+

During the Digital Planet programme, the price of £300 for a kit-form machine is given by an interviewee at the University of Bath. The same information is given on their Web site - http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/features/reprap.html

Further DIY build information is given here - http://reprap.org/wiki/Mendel_Source_Logs

A ready-made machine is sold for about £500 can be found here - http://www.techzonecom.com

Other information can be found at http://www.reprapcentral.com

Hope this helps

Richie

Cheers!

though, as the wording of the newsletter article suggests something different. Bah, semantics.

300 for a ready to go 3D printer would be, well, reminiscent of the excitement caused by a certain 'cheap' thermal colour printer about 20years ago, imho. Cheap enough for the individual to buy to experiment with, with no definitive idea in mind.

So I needs some inspiration for a 'design' to submit to HP, for an evaluation printer.

Hmm... wonder what plastic these use, and if any commonly-thrown-away household plastic could be used...!

Interesting... it talks about the kit not including "filament to print with", which I presume means the plastic - anybody know more?

No, unfortunately.

The concept looks good, but like everything else that is "open source" - the documentation is appalling .

The wiki is polluted, and pages have been removed before the repoints have been put in place/updated. Which is a shame. Email is a little, um, slow, too.

The links to the bath.ac.uk site are the same as the ones I posted. You can apparently use old milk bottle cartons as the input plastic. We have one in our lab at the moment for testing, it's mostly functional now apparently, although there seems to be a problem with the Z-axis from what I've been told by the people building it, as part of a project for the OpenSource computing degree here. Hopefully it'll be ready for use with our "national science and engineering week" exhibit in a few weeks time we'll probably have more videos etc. then.

The designers spoke about the project and the politics of it at FOSDEM 2011, there's a video of their talk online too.

Edited by deleted (Mon 07-Mar-11 00:19:30)

Old milk bottle cartons would be ideal! Could you confirm this? if not, point me in the direction of someone who can?

There's a quote about using milk bottles as a source of HDPE in this article. I believe it was also mentioned in the FOSDEM talk video I linked to in an earlier post. This blog also makes a number of references to milk bottles as a raw material for repraps.