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Cubify 3D Printers Aren't Just for Squares (Video)
There are other 3D printers out there, but Cubify claims theirs is easier to use, has easier cartridge changes, and is all-around nicer and cooler than their competition. And Timothy Lord found them at Google I/O 2012, which means Google thinks they're cool, too. Wow. At only $1300 for their basic model (plus $50 each for the plastic "print" cartridges), every home should have one of these. Or maybe two or three. Or maybe Hackerspaces will buy all of them, and that's where we'll go to satisfy our lust for 3D printing.
article needs a blue screen w/ 1800 number and steak knives.
btw, who cares if google thinks it's "cool."
where am i supposed to go to satisfy my lust for sanding? photocopying? or any of the other basic tools?!
finally, a thermally-controlled 3d-printer without an enclosure to control ambient temperature is begging for trouble.
$50 for the cartridge sounds a bit expensive.
You can probably find something equvalent for less than half the price from http://reprap.org/wiki/Printing_Material_Suppliers
Something closed-source, with proprietary consumables, and based on how it looks likely difficult to repair.
No thanks, I'll stick with a Makerbot or RepRap 3D printer.
Hmmm lets look at this:
The market for something this expensive would be people so deep into the hobby, that they would be able to get something cheaper, expandable and accepts a universal standard for input instead of something expensive and proprietary. Even in a hacker space you have to have the knowledge to get the model and then use the software to print it, you have to dive pretty deep in order to get involved.
(plus $50 each for the plastic "print" cartridges)
Filament extruder plastic costs about $35 per kilo (talk about mixed measurements... but that's how its sold. Figure "fifteen bucks per pound")
So a loaded $50 cartridge should weigh at least 4 pounds total. I can't figure out on the website how much a cartridge weighs, but just looking at it it seems like you're paying a pretty high premium for your plastic.
Not quite as bad as "precious metal cost" printer ink, but I bet by the time HP sells a 3-d printer they'll find a way to make the plastic cost more than, say, silver, on a weight basis.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I guess they also copied the business model of 2D printers.
What happened to sharing?
I thought the most important part about the 3D printer revolution was that users were in fact able to get designs through a communal repository of designs, FOR FREE.
What I see here is a bunch of super-fancy iPhone covers that sell at USD30.
That is not going to help fuel the revolution that the other 3D printers started. The implications for the world are enormous when everyone can replicate items in their house for free. It is not impressive when you get an iPrinter- that increases the cost of using it significantly.
Screw simplicity. I want to be free.
The thing that makes me nervous about this 'Cubify' business, though the hardware certainly has a more polished look than some of the DIY models, is that it appears to derive its attitude toward software and consumables from the same cesspool that consumer inkjets use...
By the pictures, the 'cartridge' is a smallish reel of polymer filament('proprietary ABS' per the FAQ). ABS filament should set you back less than $20/lb, not $50/cartridge-of-unspecified-capacity-and-properties...
And software? Ha, ha, ha. Even if you already have an STL object ready to roll, it's their fisher-price-meets-flash-game mutant bastard child of kiddo's first 3d modelling application/device-driver for you. But at least you get 25 free 'creations' if you buy one! Have they been poaching software guys from HP's consumer printers division or something?
It's honestly somewhat baffling. Given economies of scale, mass production, experience, potentially useful patents, etc. it shouldn't be terribly difficult for commercial 3d-printer vendors to compete on hardware specs(along with fit-and-finish and easy availability of finished products rather than kits) with the various DIY contraptions, but these 'Cubify' fellows seem determined to undermine what might be promising hardware with usurious consumables pricing and cringe-worthy software...
They're using the ink-jet business model by overcharging for the "cartridges". Except they are charging an arm and a leg for the printer too. So for $1300 you can buy the printer and a cartridge, and additional cartridges are $50 each. For that $50, you can print (according to their website) between 10 and 14 creations. That means each creation costs between $3.50 and $5.00 each without starting to think about paying for the machine itself and other costs (software, design, licenses, electricity, etc). Funny to think it's still cheaper to make something in China and have it shipped to the other side of the planet.
When they are serious about this being more than just a toy, they'll drop the price on the cartridges to what it's really worth - like maybe $5.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I know this will sound like shilling, but all I can give is my personal assurances that I have no connection to the site.
Shapeways.com is cool. I realized long ago that I won't personally 3d print very many items, and there are still economies of scale to 3d printing, even if a lot less than manufacturing. So shapeways has multiple varieties of 3d printer, and numerous materials of varying pricing, and open source models other users have printed you can use or modify and use. As a user, you only see the software(blender) and the finished product when it's shipped to you. Actually OWNING a 3d printer doesn't appeal to me much, but there are a couple things I'm working on to (eventually, some day) print.
SoI take it you have never heard of lost wax casting I take it?
You print the item you want, you pack that in a material with a higher melting point than the desired material for the object, melt the end material and pour it in.
What I want to know is when will these things have a hopper where I can chuck all my old laundry detergent bottles as feedstock?
Someone had to do it.
Clearly I need more caffeine.
I meant to say:
I take it you have never heard of lost wax casting?
You print the item you want, you pack that in a material with a higher melting point than the desired material for the object, melt the end material and pour it in.
This is how a lot of metal casting is/was done using wax as the model and sand as the form.
I don't see people going to a hackerspace to print something out. This tech will take off when it gets adopted by home improvement stores. Then you can get your printed plastic at the same place you get your cut glass and timber.
Or you could have the local smithy cast it for a shilling.
No, you keep that in the garage.
WIth just a propane tank and some hardware store supplies you can easily be casting low melting point metals. Even just reuse "free" metal like aluminum cans or wheel weights.
It's a popular idea, but the materials science guys tell us that re-melted plastic has different properties than "fresh" plstic, and the more times you melt it, the worse it gets (more brittle, different melting temp. etc)
If you want accurate prints, you're going to need fresh plstic. Sad but true.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Title: Cubify 3D Printers Aren't Just for Squares
Description: There are other 3D printers out there, but Cubify claims theirs is easier to use, has easier cartridge changes, and is all-around nicer and cooler than their competition.
00:00 TITLE
A shot of a 3D printer printing an object is shown, with the SlashdotTV logo bar reading "The Cubify 3-D Printer at Google I/O 2012"
00:03 TITLE
Timothy Lord is shown standing in a hallway
00:03 Timothy
Here's another intriguing product on display at Google I/O, mostly because it can be controlled from an Android tablet, although it can also be fed data from a wireless network or from a USB stick plugged into the side.
00:12 TITLE
Another shot of the 3D printer printing an object is shows.
00:18 TITLE
Back to the shot of Timothy
00:18 Timothy
It's a 3D printer that tries to emulate the easy-of-use of a laser printer, rather than a typical 3D printer where you have to feed it rolls of continuous stock.
00:27 TITLE
The view changes to Adam of cubify.com in front of their booth at Google I/O.
At the booth there are 3 Cube printers set up that are shown behind Adam.
00:27 Adam
Hey, this is Adam with cubify.com , part of 3D Systems, and we're here with the Cube, just having an opportunity to take a quick little demo.
Just finished printing up a little Android right now, so if you wanna take a look a little bit closer...
00:42 TITLE
The view zooms in on the Cube printer
00:43 Adam
There are a couple of things here that are actually unique to this particular 3D printer.
Where there are several other printers that exist out there, at a similar price point, that are a little bit more open - instead what we opted to do was, rather than having to worry about "how hot does the extruder need to be?", "is my plastic gonna be too hot or too cold?", "If it's too cold is it gonna jam the head, possibly unhinge something?", "if my bed is too hot or too cold causing any kind of warping", "do I have to worry about in-fill pattern?", Support material designs?" - our 26 years of engineering experience have automated that for us.
So this way all I need to do is to be able to hit 'build', and I'm able to get my parts.
For our support materials, what we actually did was created some perforated supports, so this way [...]
01:24 TITLE
Adam reaches over to the printed Android robot and pokes at some support structures
01:24 Adam
[...] they snap right off - no big deal at all, doesn't take any heavy lifting, doesn't damage the part.
01:32 Adam
Now, from what I heard, you guys were interested in changing out some cartridges.
Before we go ahead and do that..
You can take any STL format, pop it into our software, hit 'import', hit 'build' - from there you're ready to go.
Everything is automated for you as far as support structures, everything is ready as far as build times and fill patterns.
You can either do it via USB, or via WiFi, no problem at all.
01:56 Adam
We're gonna do a really quick demo right now as far as how to input and change out a cartridge, so come on over.
02:00 TITLE
Adam inputs a few commands on the control panel.
02:03 Adam
We have two screens between 'print' and 'setup'.
We're just gonna go to 'setup', and our first option is to 'load cartridge'.
So as we hit that, what's going on now is we're heating up the extruder, and we're actually gonna reverse out the plastic material right here.
And in a matter of seconds what's gonna happen next minute, minute and a half, is the material is actually gonna eject.
We're gonna pull it out, we're gonna pop in another cartridge, and from there we're just gonna feed it right back in.
Really simple.
Now it says right here to replace the cartridge and press the button.
Hit that.
Now I'm just gonna insert the filament right in here, like so, and right now you can see it pulling in.
Now another 5, 10 seconds you're gonna see a little bit of excess material
Unfortunately all plastics are different.
No plastic is the same, plastics have different composition, additives, melting points, all sorts of different properties that really makes it impossible to melt them together and expect any sort of consistency.
OTOH it instead of melting the plastics, your old bottles could be shredded somehow into powder and then mixed with something sticky, some glue or epoxy, but even then different behaviours of different plastics would be problematic.
You can't handle the truth.
Fair, but I can see the utility in a finished device like this where everything is pretty simple. My first thought was of the tech labs we had as kids in middle school.
Also, can we please get a /. operating rule for video ads that says you can't immediately start with a annoying alarm clock going off? That little eye-opener damn near gave me a heart attack.
http://smooth-on.com/
In case you'd like to learn how to do it.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Seems to me that that is a function of the additives in the plastic. If you use all milk containers, the properties shouldn't change.
Also, I never heard of the properties of plastic changing just from melting and re-extruding them. Maybe it is just a scale issue, where small scale reprocessing creates an inferior filament.
Laundry detergent bottles are emminently remeltable. Just don't breath the fumes, and expect the volume to shrink a bit. But the end product is relatively durable. That plastic is a bit less rigid than would be needed for some uses, though.
Someone had to do it.
Actually, I was wondering the opposite, which is how to recycle objects that you make. I would guess that typically there will be significant waste as prototypes are fine-tuned, as well as when whatever you make breaks or is no longer needed.
I hope the design software will make it easy to incorporate the plastic's recycle number in a triangle embossed somewhere on the object, and even encourage it. My town's recycle service requires that all plastic objects have this number on them. In the past they have refused to pick up non-container plastic objects that don't have this number (when they notice it), such as a toy that stands out from the rest.
You're better off turning in the aluminum cans for the deposit and buying fresh aluminum with the money. There is FAR LESS than 5 cents of aluminum in a soda can.
=Smidge=
It's a function of the plastic itself. Most plastics will depolymerize* at a much lower temperature than that at which they would theoretically melt (if they could reach it without depolymerization). When you melt and re-solidify it, it often isn't even a plastic anymore.
3D printers use thermoplastics, which are the exception in that they become soft and workable at a temperature that's below depolymerization.
*Alternatively, turn into a different plastic composed of the same building blocks. Proteins** are an excelent example: go more than a little above body temperature and most will denature.
**Yes, they're polymers.
Also, I never heard of the properties of plastic changing just from melting and re-extruding them. Maybe it is just a scale issue, where small scale reprocessing creates an inferior filament.
Then you are not listening to the right people, those who know their stuff. Plastics are long chain molecules, and extrusion involves high shear forces at high temperatures, cracking those chains.
Next, these molecules need stabilizers to protect them from UV light and oxygen radicals. Those are also damaged in the melting and re-extrusion process. Either you add more of them, or permanently degrade the material.
The list goes on ...
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
Most people are used to paying out the ass for inkjet/toner cartridges. Anyways, the RepRap is much cheaper and flexible, but it isn't something the mainstream users that Cubify is targeting will be able to build/use. Your average Slashdotter that likes to tinker with 3D printing will take the time to become proficient with the small details of getting everything to work; but the run of the mill engineer, doctor or whatever trying to prototype something via CAD just wants it to work without much effort. Plus it appears to be more polished, which helps in regard to workplace safety. An exposed extruder isn't something you really want. While I love the RepRap project, 3D printing won't become mainstream if it remains a gearhead type of operation.