Dremel Releases 3D Printer

Lucas123 writes Power tool maker Dremel today announced it's now selling a desktop 3D printer that it said is targeted at "the masses" with a $1,000 price tag and intuitive software. Dremel's 3D Idea Builder is a fused deposition modeling (FDM) machine that can use only one type of polymer filament, polylactide (PLA) and that comes in 10 colors. The new 3D printer has a 9-in. x 5.9-in. x 5.5-in. build area housed in a self-contained box with a detachable lid and side panels. Dremel's currently selling its machine on Amazon and The Home Depot's website, but it plans brick and mortar store sales this November.

Comments

With a name like Dremel

[Zenjamin]

you know its got to be good

Re:With a name like Dremel

[Mister Liberty]

In fact, you might probably be able to 3D-print a Dremel with it.

Re:With a name like Dremel

[ShanghaiBill]

In fact, you might probably be able to 3D-print a Dremel with it.

It can't form complex machines. Guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts. It doesn't work that way. But it can form solid shapes. Knives and stabbing weapons.

Re:With a name like Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the reviews I've seen so far suggest it's limited in slicing functionality, difficult to change filament, and users have reported technical issues with the early units.

Problem is, Dremel sourced it from FlashForge, and their printers cut many, many corners.

Underspecced?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Is it me or does it sound a bit underwhelming for $1000? I don't mean the price is non-competitive, it just seems like I'd want something more capable if I was going to take the plunge. Burn $1000 and in a week won't you be hankering for a much more capable machine?

Re:Underspecced?

[ArcadeMan]

What's underwhelming about it? That it can only print with PLA? The build volume? What do you mean by "more capable"?

Re:Underspecced?

[rijrunner]

I've seen dozens of printers listed with better specs, but most of them are dummy specs. You couldn't run most of those machine anywhere near the specs they list. How many 3D printers out there actually achieve the speeds they claim, or the print area?

Honestly, if they can deliver a machine that works at those specs out of the box without tinkering or having to recalibrate, it just might be worth that amount. It looks reasonably solid and rigid and, from an outside view, well designed. (No idea where the spool feeds from from the pics).

Re:Underspecced?

[smellsofbikes]

Is it me or does it sound a bit underwhelming for $1000? I don't mean the price is non-competitive, it just seems like I'd want something more capable if I was going to take the plunge. Burn $1000 and in a week won't you be hankering for a much more capable machine?

Yes. And spending two months debugging bed/head temperatures, print and extruder speed, and layer thickness, so your prints consistently stay solid and adhered to the bed rather than peeling, will be totally invisible to you because that $1K presumably means someone else already did that. There's a lot of value in getting something that's been debugged, and that's particularly the case for extrusion-based FDM 3d printers. It's okay to be hankering for a better machine, particularly if you're already printing. The best 3d printer is the one that's actually building parts for you.

Re:Underspecced?

[Wing_Zero]

in the third picture of the device from the top, they show the print head, and to the lower left, the spool. looks like it threads behind the head, and into a holder above it.

Re:Underspecced?

[Anonymous Coward]

9 inches should be enough for everyone.

Re:Underspecced?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

I get what you're saying. Most of the stuff Dremel sells is generally pretty decent stuff, or always used to be back in the day. If its a good machine and does what you need to do, then sure, that's cool. I can just imagine a LOT of interesting projects I might want to do that where I might want to use other materials or etc. So that's my curiosity really is if I spent $1000 on a machine like this one will I be hankering for the $3000 machine in a week?

Re:Underspecced?

[gl4ss]

depends what you're comparing it to.

if you're comparing to similar sized wanhaos or flashforges(it's a rebranded flashforge) its not that different in price.

if you compare it to makerbots it's a bargain. and less bullshit than current mbi products. and just as capable (PLA only like all current makerbot printers).

as to why having ability to print abs is sometimes nice: it can withstand higher operating temps for the part you print. 60 degrees(hot car) and pla gets easy to deform.

as to why cheapo printers don't allow for abs.. you need at the very least a heated bed and that needs better PSU.. and an enclosure helps too.

for a thousand bucks with a brand name association and warranty it's no really so badly priced. of course if you can tinker a little bit you can get a printer for 500 bucks - but be prepared to spend couple of weeks tinkering around getting it just right. my currently in use printer cost total of about 540 bucks with the upgrades i had to do and it prints now ok(comparable to 1000$ printers) but it took redesigning of some parts to get to this point.

point being, you can buy makerbot 5th gen for 2800+$.. or you could buy two of these and forty kilos of plastic. and the 5th gen probably needs you to call support more often (mbi just recently killed their google support group to cut bad press. among other things their new smart extruder is a _mess_ and not user maintainable, so you have to send it back every time you get a clog - which is quite often since they fucked up the redesign real bad).

and the flashforge dreamer or dremel rebadge of it seems to have a lot saner approach when it comes to stepper motor driving too(mbi rolled a custom stepper driver solution for their 5th gens.. and it's noisy as hell and the board seems built so that it is non trivial to update the sw on the driver chips)..

Re:Underspecced?

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting 3D printer with decent mechanics and electronics for 1000$ is more than a bargain. I have to say this is probably one of the best low cost 3D printers in existence, better than many printers 2-3X the price. Yes you can get a 3D printer for 300$ that sort of kind of works, but the mechanics will be complete crap and electronics wont be much better and the machine simply wont be reliable enough to use as an everyday tool.

Re:Underspecced?

[bmcage]

It's a makerbot replicator type, and cheaper than that. Direct feed, enclosed. If it works like a replicator in quality, you will be happy.

The PLA is no good though. Great for decorative things, but if you actually want to do prototyping of engineering stuff, you want ABS.

Re:Underspecced?

[coinreturn]

What's underwhelming about it? That it can only print with PLA? The build volume? What do you mean by "more capable"?

No heated build platform.

Re:Underspecced?

[Anonymous Coward]

ugh.. please don't post racist comments. If it's just ignorance, then get yourself educated.

Re:Underspecced?

[smellsofbikes]

What I tell people who are thinking about 3d printing is: if you have a specific project, that needs 3d printing, for which going through shapeways or something is either uneconomical (because you're going to need six tries to get your widget dimensioned correctly) or too slow (you're going to be making a ton of different prototype widgets) then a home 3d printer may be a good idea for you. Otherwise, you'll get it, print an octopus and a tardis, and then it'll gather dust and you'll kick yourself for having spent the money.
With that said, if you do have a specific project, and you use the printer for that, you will get enough time on it, and more specifically on using the software to make models, that you will have basically mastered the learning curve, and suddenly you'll be printing a lot of other things, that you didn't ever even think about making.
I'm co-owner of a plus-size mendelmax 2. We got it to print prototype circuit board adapters so we could stick x board on y piece of hardware. Once we'd gotten that hammered out, the other guy who owns it has printed a plug for his sewer drain, a rat trap for live-catch, buckets for a tiny pelton wheel generator, and I've printed lathe-holding tools, lcd bezels, automated printed circuit board test fixtures, and most of a fuel injection intake manifold for my car. We use it for everything.
But you need to have that first big complicated project that you have to get finished, to get to the point where it is a reliable tool, rather than a gadget.

With all THAT said, you'll always want a larger printer. But if the printer you have can cover 95% of your jobs, that's a whole lot better than none at all. Based on the stuff I've made, this printer could handle 95% of the demands I have, and there's always shapeways for the other 5%.

Re:Underspecced?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Great, thanks! I am definitely getting some good info. 10 or 15 years ago when I was doing a lot of oddball stuff I'd have probably had one of these things ASAP. These days its hard to find the space and time to do projects, so I really am behind the curve. I have some interesting ideas, but nothing so solid that it yet warrants running out to spend $1000 (ouch) right now. At least I'm getting a better idea of what might be useful. Hopefully I can find a maker space that isn't too far away one of these days and try a few things out.

Re:Underspecced?

[smellsofbikes]

A makerspace is definitely the best bet as regards hardware. If you think you're going to pursue this, start playing with modeling software now. It's at least as complicated. (Moreso if you get a 3d printer that already works and you don't have to assemble and tune it.) Sketchup, Autocad's new free 123d or whatever it's called, freecad, are all very usable for graphics-oriented, and openscad is good if you're a programmer. I find freecad the easiest combination of precision, adaptability, and ease of use, but other people have totally different opinions.

Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[ArcadeMan]

Frankly, I would have expected Dremel to come out with a small desktop CNC, not a 3D printer. Given the price of the Roland iModela, Dremel would probably have offered a much better, bigger and stronger machine for the same price.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[rijrunner]

From personal experience..

Trying to design and build a CNC machine to function as an appliance is very, very difficult. There are simply to many factors that impact how well the machine would work. A person who writes g-code for a milling machine has to be able to understand how it will work - balancing the motors, speeds and feeds, materials, and working head. A 3D-printer requires very little, if any, skill on the part of the person using the machine. They can just load pre-packaged items, if they feel like it. It is a much more consumer friendly product with a huge upside.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[NoKaOi]

I take it you've never actually used a 3-D printer?

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[umafuckit]

Well, it's a CNC extruder rather than a CNC miller. TBH, I think most of the fuss about 3D printers is just that they're called "printers."

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure he could ask, so you've never used a CNC machiene?

3-D printing, while it can be challenging, is just a matter of how fast the head can move while "printing". With CNC you have to know how big of a bite your bit can take out of your current material, what the stress loads are at different speeds and it changes while going around corners. How big of a bite you can take with your bit based on the bit, material, and speed of rotation.

Now for some additional fun. Just because you can make it work on a CNC doesn't mean it won't destroy your expensive bits quickly. Also you want it to be productive so you can't run too conservative a tool path or a 4 hour job will take 12 hours and cut your productivity to 30%. Not to mention if you mess up the calculations you might just outright destroy bits when you run. Not likely to destory your 3D print head because you took a turn too quickly.

So yes, using a 3-D printer is MUCH easier. He didn't say it was simple, he just claimed it was easier.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[aXis100]

We are no-where near the point where fused filament 3D Printing is a plug and play operation. In the last 12 months I've had to spend a lot of time and effort to get reasonable prints, and have had to regularly consider things like:

Printer idiosyncracies (which a professional printer should avoid):
- Wear & tear on pulleys and bushings changing belt performance
- Correct hot end temperatures, scorching and smoking of filament leading to clogged nozzles
- Bed flatness
- Enclosure temperature control, adhesion to the bed and control of warping

Then, even if your printer is working well there are a huge number of factors to consider when drawing and slicing your shape:
- Orientation of the shape with respect to grain in the filament to give good styrength
- Orientation of the shape to avoid bridges and overhangs
- Inside fill percentage and fill style to optimise between strength and potential warping.
- Adjustment for tolerance and oozing around and intermeshing parts

That's not a complete list, but it's what I'm down to now on a regular basis now that I've tweaked all of the other settings and am getting some consistency.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[jandrese]

I'm a little surprised someone hasn't come out with a machine that does both. You extrude the parts with a regular disposition machine, then it goes back over the model with fine tools to do cleanup and fine detail work. Probably a little too complicated for the industry currently, but it's something I could definitely see in a premium product at some point.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[rijrunner]

I build CNC machines
I build 3D printers.
I am guessing you have never used a CNC milling machine. Let's look closer:
Some variables for CNC milling (Not exhaustive):

type of bit (material and shape - probably 20 base shapes in a beginner shop. dozens of bit materials)
geometry of bit (literally thousands of options here)
new or worn, and what is the wear pattern (variable every time. Usually not an issue unless you are doing very precise work, in which case, you need to mike the wear and enter it into the tool table)
number of flutes/teeth
helix angle
center cutting
roughing or finishing
tool coating
shank
undercuts
step over percent
cutter offset
surface cutting speed
spindle speed
is spindle speed variable
feed per tooth
depth of cut
conventional or climb milling
material being machined
coolant feed enable
coolant feed type
tool changer
tool number in tool table
homing and limit switches
All of these variables play off each other. You can change one variable, it can then cascade into changing 4 or 5 others easily. Many of the variables above can destroy the bit, machine, part, or injure you, if you get it wrong.

The fact of the matter, I can take yoda.stl, run it through slic3r, stick it in a 3D printer and not worry much about it. Someone needs to know the g-code along the workflow, but realistically, it is the coder for Slic3r in this example and it is automated. If the machine is calibrated, it will print. If I run a milling operation through CAM software, it needs to be test cut to verify it won't damage anything. Just not inserting the milling bit all the way can damage the machine.

Now, look at it from an appliance situation. Do I know as the machine designer, what material or bits will be used? Do I know what sort of shape they are going to try to machine? I would have to lock down that machine to a ridiculous degree to get it to behave like an appliance, and even then, I can't be sure it won't damage anything. The Dremel 3D printer looks to be locked down with very few variables. It is designed for people to just load a file and hit "run". From a marketing and legal point of view, which is a better product to market?

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the Roland Modela that was out 20 years ago? Yeah, 3D printing sure is cutting edge stuff.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

12 months?!? What a coincidence, I read a study that claimed that a 3D printer pays for itself in a year! How lucky for you!

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[rijrunner]

You might want to step back for a second.

Your first list is items that deal with engineering issues and, as you say, can be engineered around. 2 of those 4 items do not apply to the 3D dremel printer.

The second part.. has absolutely nothing to do with running a 3D printer and everything to do with part design. You could send me your CAD files, I should be able to run them through slic3r, and print them sight unseen. Parts design requires a lot of skill. Printing out a part, not so much. But, with so few variables, g-code conversion is a relatively simple procedure.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[ShanghaiBill]

I take it you've never actually used a 3-D printer?

I have used both 3D printers, and a Sherline table-top CNC. The amount of operator skill needed for CNC is far higher. You need to be able to plan and code the specific sequence of steps, the spindle speed, gear backlash etc. You need to know about cutting fluids, metallurgy, work hardening, when to use "climb" milling, etc. Even after ten years I still learn something new every time I talk to an experienced machinist.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[pushing-robot]

Frankly, I would have expected Dremel to come out with a small desktop CNC, not a 3D printer.

I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if the WD-40 company had created a product to make things stick together.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[dbIII]

It's a single material with the 3D printer, having to work with a range of materials makes milling far less trivial and makes your "never actually used" somewhat comical.
I've written scripts to turn 3D drawings into G-code programs and making sure that the cutter is going at the correct speed (so that it can actually do the job without breaking itself or your part) is a bit harder than you appear to have considered.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

You are comparing metal milling with plastic extruding. If you were to compare plastic milling with metal extruding you would get the reverse roles.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

"too" many factors - but then, you ARE American, aren't you...

You don't even understand the difference between the words 'to' and 'too'...

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[StripedCow]

Looks like your CNC machine could use some forms of feedback to make it more reliable.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[ArsenneLupin]

Doesn't all this depend on the software? On a milling machine intended for the end user, the software could know about some of these constraints, and automatically reduce the speed to safe levels where needed. And also, this iModela machine works with soft materials (plastics, woods), not steel, which (probably) means it's not quite as likely to destroy its bits if mis-driven.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[DrXym]

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say a 3D printer SHOULDN'T require any skill on the part of the user. That is assuming the hardware and software are up to snuff. The software shouldn't accept impossible shapes and the hardware / firmware should be reliable enough to accurately print what its told to print. The only reason it shouldn't is if it suffers a jam or runs out of material.

When that actually happens and we see reliable printers it'll move from being a niche thing into the mainstream. The problem I see for Makerbot et al is if they don't pull their fingers out soon then someone like Canon, HP, Brother etc. will surely make such a machine and they'll probably have the brand recognition to dominate the market.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

Short answer - no. The user has to know what they are doing, even when using the super-expensive software packages. No software replaces Machinery's Handbook and the experience of breaking a few carbide endmills.

Source: I own a small (half-ton) CNC mill, and use commercial CAD/CAM/NC software for it.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

I've considered buying a CNC machine, so I've done some research, and know (more or less) that everything you say is true and accurate. But, you sound like a buggy whip manufacturer to me. I'm just a manager, so things seem simpler to me by definition, but none of your issues sound all that difficult to handle with some software and sensors. Walk the user through a few questions for material type and the other information.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, the word "standardization" hasn't entered your realm of experience. Once you accept it's a Dremel(tm) branded CNC machine, using Dremel(tm) bits and the Dremel(tm) software to generate the Dremel(tm) specific g-code, many of those variables become constants.

Not saying it isn't complex (it is)... but that's why people want to buy a Name Brand plug-n-play solution.

Personally, you seem to be intent on over-simplifying FDM g-code and over-complicating CNC g-code.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ignorance is showing. I see it all the time from young white collar types. Someday you'll grow up and realize that having a degree and a desk job do not make for a superior human, and then you'll maybe tone down the smug. We can all hope anyway...

rijrunner left out huge areas of expertise in hopes of making it understandable outside the field, as a courtesy to people like you. I saw no mention of cleanliness, rigidity, or workholding. Any of those are easy ways to fail. A single metal chip falling into the vise can upset the position of the material such that after you finish your cutting you do not have a flat, square, or parallel part. The operator has to know this and diligently keep things clean. A vise is generally bolted to the machine table. Care must be taken to make sure it is perfectly aligned with any axis of movement, and I've worked with up to 6 live. (Not counting the spindle rotation, though some do for reasons you likely wouldn't understand.) There is no substitute for operator skill when setting up specialized operations, that is after all how you can get a general purpose machine to do all these specialized things. Rigidity is critical in the way it allows process control. Even a 3-ton machine has a moving parts and resonant frequency. Something rijrunner and I know that you don't is that a certain tool of a certain type and size cutting a certain amount of a certain material a certain way might be the textbook perfect way to do it for best accuracy, finish, and tool life. But on a particular machine this might setup vibrations and chatter that destroy the tool shortly after you start cutting. The skill of the operator in this case is overcoming the limits of the tool, which might need adjustment or worn parts replaced but is still a more productive member of society than you.

The fact that you specifically mention feedback in CNC vs FDM 3D printers I find humorous. Do you even know how the systems are different? "Real" machines have far better means of knowing their actual position beyond counting how many steps they have taken. Laser etched glass scales, rotary encoders, etc. Ever see a 3D printer run a few layers and then everything seems to be 3mm to the left? Step loss. Start over.

What rijrunner didn't mention to you, and also shows your ignorance, is that many "real" CNC machines already have many feedback mechanisms available. You still need a skilled person to set it all up, but tool wear can be laser checked and offsets auto-corrected. Broken tools can be automatically replaced with spares in the tool magazine, but sending a new tool into a broken one will likely just break that one too. This is only useful when either a skilled operator is present or the process is continuous material feed and the material with broken tool stuck in it is ejected. When working on $40,000 chunks of titanium we would try to extract the broken bit rather than toss the material and start over.

CNC for the masses sounds about as good an idea as calculus for kindergarteners. They can't handle it because they don't know how much they don't know.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[DG]

My experience running SolidWorks through MasterCAM was very different.

Feed MasterCAM the specs on your machine and the part file, and what you got Just Worked. Clamp the workpiece and you could walk away.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Rei]

I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing you, your horse is too high.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[Rei]

It does seem rather weird to treat it as an intractable problem. Are we really talking about something that's AI-Complete here, like natural language understanding? Something not succeptible to a combination of chained rules, physics calculations, and statistical analysis? I seriously doubt it. So different machines can act differently due to wear, etc? Gee, people have never written programs to deal with that before, heavens no. So some things may require a decision from the operator, like whether to restart a defective piece or try to salvage it? Gee, I've never heard of a program asking the user a question during operation before! A piece of "printing" hardware experiencing a jam of some kind and needing manual intervention? Gee, nobody has ever experienced that one before!

I'm not saying that CNC machines and 3d printers are equivalent and that you can just swap a CNC machine in to the sort of role 3d printers are intended for. Of course the task of gouging out steel with power tools is a more intensive one than writing out plastic in layers with a slightly more advanced version of a hot glue gun. But we're not talking about creating superintelligent cyborgs here, we're talking about analyzing physical processes, including their various failure modes, and when a decision or action is required, presenting the user with the information needed to do that.

Re:Wrong type of machine for Dremel

[glitch!]

If you are feeling really evil, print out a replica of the WD-40 label and put it on a can of 3M Spray Adhesive.

great

[Anonymous Coward]

Now when I massacre something with the cutting wheel I can make another and ruin it again

Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of cheaper (and probably better) options from Makerbot etc.

Now it it came is at a $400 price point it would be a whole different discussion.

Re:Too expensive

[mythosaz]

This might be the most consumer-friendly-name company providing a device, and being able to buy one at Home Depot means it's likely returnable at Home Depot -- at least once it makes it from the website to the stores.

The price point is almost meaningless, since to most, every other company is going to seem like a nerd toy, while Dremel(tm)(r)(c)(sm) Brand Tools sounds like something trustworthy.

Re:Too expensive

[Trailer Trash]

Plenty of cheaper (and probably better) options from Makerbot etc.

Now it it came is at a $400 price point it would be a whole different discussion.

You're not their target market. There are a lot of old-school tinkerers who are familiar with Dremel - and a lot of people who are familiar with Home Depot - who know nothing about 3D printing. Many of those folks would be very interested in 3D printing if they knew about it. So here we are.

I think Dremel is going to raise the stature of 3D printing in an entirely new market and that will quite frankly help every other company out there in this space.

Re:Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever used a dremel tool?
For the most part they're crap. Perhaps before the '80s thay had good stuff but it's been downhill for a long time.

Re:Too expensive

[Em Adespoton]

Have you ever used a dremel tool?
For the most part they're crap. Perhaps before the '80s thay had good stuff but it's been downhill for a long time.

I'll bite. I've used a Dremel-brand dremel tool in the late 90's, and found it solid (if made of a lot of plastic), dependable, and accurate. The accessories were way too expensive, but Black & Decker accessories are of the same quality and fit in the Dremel opening.

B&D, Ryobi, Makita and similar manufacturer's dremel tools though -- I've found to be underpowered, made of cheap components, and have a shaft locking mechanism that is abysmal, not holding the shaft in a centred manner at all. DeWalt is also pretty good.

Likewise, I've had hit-and-miss experience with Dremel's other offerings -- some are good, some aren't. But their original tool still works as well as it ever did.

Re:Too expensive

[mythosaz]

Their "classic" offering is a solid tool. I was unimpressed with one of their early cordless models. I'd buy them again if I were replacing my "classic."

Re:Too expensive

[sjames]

My mid-90s Dremel kicks ass.

Re:Too expensive

[jenningsthecat]

My mid-90s Dremel kicks ass.

My mid-70s Dremel kicks ass. I'm limited to only two different shank diameters because it has a pin chuck instead of a jaw chuck, but that hasn't limited its usefulness at all. And it seems that back then the bearings had tighter tolerances - the thing runs quieter and smoother than any of the new Dremel tools I've used. It also has speed regulation, so when I load it down it slows down less than newer models. I think they got rid of that feature because too many people were abusing it and burning out the motor; too bad, because the extra grunt really comes in handy sometimes.

Re:Too expensive

[sjames]

The trick is to grasp that at high RPMs, it's not pressure that drives the work. A light touch will make more progress.

Re:Too expensive

[dbIII]

I'm expecting that when the crowd that read and build the stuff out of "Fine Woodworking" get into 3D printing that we'll start to see some stuff that we didn't expect and they'll complain about shortcomings we're not noticing or just putting up with - leading to improvements in the equipment.

Re:Too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, a Dremel is nothing like a Bosch tool, even though Dremel is owned by Bosch.

Re:Too expensive

[Princeofcups]

You're not their target market. There are a lot of old-school tinkerers who are familiar with Dremel - and a lot of people who are familiar with Home Depot - who know nothing about 3D printing. Many of those folks would be very interested in 3D printing if they knew about it. So here we are.

I think Dremel is going to raise the stature of 3D printing in an entirely new market and that will quite frankly help every other company out there in this space.

This is the first 3D printer I'm seriously tempted to look at. Dremel makes professional tools for fine detailed work, and I have some faith that this device will work well. And it doesn't have that "maker" stench of unwashed wanna-bees. Not a device to "hack" or experiment with, but one to actually get some useful parts built for my current projects.

This is so 2012.

[randomhacks]

You can date it from the marketing photo. In 2014, no one goes 'WOW' and points at 3D printers anymore.

Re:This is so 2012.

[rijrunner]

"Dremel 3D pre-sale starts Sept. 18, 2014, on homedepot.com and amazon.com, with in-store availability at select The Home Depot® stores in early November."

That's a WOW right there.

I've been through the PC boom in the late 70's and the Internet boom in the 90's. That "no one points at 3D printers" is no more true than when it was said about PC's in 1979 or the Internet in 1994. (I heard that exact sentiment expressed those years).

This is what a boom looks like right before it goes off.

Re: This is so 2012.

[Anonymous Coward]

you're delusional. Most people haven't even heard of 3D printing.

Re:This is so 2012.

[HiThere]

Weeel....sort of. Depends on what you mean. I looked at a lot of (well, several) computers before the Apple ][ was released. They were all interesting, but not quite interesting enough. Then the Apple ][+ was released with a Pascal card, and I bought it. A lot of other people made about the same choice at about the same time. That was when the PC bacame notable. A few years later IBM released the IBM PC with no significant advantage over the current Apple product...but that was when it boomed.

This is sort of like Apple releasing the Apple ][. Not the ][+. OTOH, Dremel is a much bigger name now than Apple was then. Perhaps that will be a big enough kick...but my expectation is that there will turn out to be the need for much fine-tuning of the design. Then Dremel will release a greatly improved model. And then someone who's the darling of a business segment will release a different, probably incompatible, model with some useful differences, and many user drawbacks...but it will sell into businesses, and Dremel will be edged out of the market...though not completely, and they may continue to dominate among home users and certain niche segments.
But THAT will be the boom.

Makerbot, etc. is just like the S-100 computers that predated Apple.

N.B.: This is all reasoning from analogy, and therefore not to be trusted. But it's still a good guess.

Re:This is so 2012.

[rijrunner]

Honestly, I think FDM is not the future of 3D printing.

Stepping back though, I am thinking of the hundreds of computer companies that have come and gone. There were some very big names that stepping into the PC business at the time as well as others who were big in other areas who moved into this field trying to position themselves. They ran on the potential of the market, not on how to make it happen or on what it would look like. The ones who moved on were the ones who saw the growth market. Altair, Sym-1, Aim-65 were for hobbyists. TRS-80 was one of the few who had it right, but they were early to their window. (I'd argue that Radio Shack was a much, much bigger name then than Dremel is now for the kind of stuff you're talking about. ).

FDM produced parts on this class of hardware is, to be frank, rather crappy. There are over 200 printers listed on 3ders.org and I seriously doubt more than 10-15 will survive the next 3 years and that does match the weedout of the 1st generation of PC manufacturers. (Granted, there were a lot fewer as the barrier to entry then was much higher, but almost none had the engineering and market position to move into the PC clone market. It was not IBM taking the business market that killed most of the 1st generation as much as the fact that they created what amounted to a industry standard that very few were positioned to exploit or have viable alternatives for income. The standard that will need to be met going forward into the second generation of the current 3D printer wave is appliance like behavior with good part quality).*

The main difference here between then, and now, is that major players in the 3D industry are not sitting back. They are very active and have a huge backlog of patents to draw on. HP is already out there with its business class 3D printer. Dremel priced their printer at exactly the same price as the 3D Systems Cube 3 and has almost the exact same specs.

*A discussion for another day. I would be very interested to see if there is any correlation on who survived and who could run Lotus.

Re:This is so 2012.

[mwvdlee]

This is commoditization of 3D printing.
No ordering from small companies online or spending weeks finetuning; just go to the local store, unpack it from the box and start using it.
Isn't this what we've been talking about for so many years; printing out spare parts at home and such?
If I see one of my non-techy relatives print out some boring part they need to fix something, I'll go "WOW".

Re:This is so 2012.

[Rei]

There's two types of processes that I'm surprised I've not seen more focus on.

1) Printing of, and then filling of molds, which can then be melted down and reused. That's how the higher-end 3d printed parts that you can buy online made, including almost all 3d-printed metal parts you get from online 3d printing services (the extra steps for metal being to coat the mold in a ceramic shell and melt away the mold). The only commercial 3d-printed metal that I'm aware of that doesn't work in this manner is iMaterialize's titanium, which uses laser sintering - and it has an out-of-this-world price tag.

It seems to me that if you used a mold, while in several ways it complicates the process (extra steps, preventing adherence to the molded object, etc), in others, it simplifies it. Your print heads don't need to handle a variety of materials or produce a pretty or durable product. They still need to be able to produce fine surface details but the ability to print thin structures loses importance. Once you've got a mold, you open up the floodgates to the sort of products you can fill it with, anything that will harden either through cooling or via chemical reaction, anything from thermoset plastics to candy.

(note I'm not envisioning a little hobby home printer that fills molds with molten metal in your office, mind you... although I could envision a more garage-scale or small industrial scale version that could handle such a task)

2) I've never even heard of a 3d printer being based on thermal spraying. With thermal spraying, you can choose the balance of precision vs. flow rate via nozzle size. Your materials are virtually unlimited, pretty much anything you can turn into a powder. It could conceivably even let you work with metals in a home environment, if the rate was kept low enough that heat buildup wouldn't be a problem (and you'd want an air filter on the exhaust, even though it should be pretty clean). You can choose the temperature and velocity you're spraying at by varying the pressures of compressed air and combustible fuel fed into the chamber with the powder, so you can work both with heat-sensitive and heat-requisite materials, as well as materials that can't stand high velocity impacts and materials that require them. Such a system could likewise do more than just print - it could add and then sectively remove substrates, it could engrave, it could change surface textures by sandblasting/polishing with various materials, it could paint or apply high-performance coatings - pretty much anything you can envision from a device whose fundamental workings are "shoot grains of material of your choosing at a velocity of your choosing (1-1000+m/s) and temperature of your choosing (cold to thousands of degrees)".

In both cases #1 and #2, I'm genuinely curious as to why there's not been more work done with them. Or perhaps there has been work done with them that I'm unaware of? I'm asking as someone who makes and buys 3d printed items online but has never printed one herself.

Re:This is so 2012.

[Rei]

Oh, and in #2, sound insulation would also be very important, both for the compressor (if compressed air is used, rather than bottled oxygen) and for the jet itself (which is basically like a tiny rocket engine). And I guess the filter isn't just about removing any incomplete combustion products from the exhaust, but also any dust or the like.

Even if it ultimately isn't suited for, say, a quiet home office, 3d printing isn't really an home office task, we're more talking about a "garage workshop" sort of thing. I'm just curious whether anyone has pursued such an approach, because at a glance it sure looks to have potential for making a very broadly capable product. I mean, such a system should even be capable of printing electronics, including resistors, capacitors, etc, maybe even some types of batteries (not anything requiring extreme precision, like a CPU, and li-ion batteries would be right out due to the thin, sensitive and rather complex membrane needed, there's no way you could just deposit that, but still..).

Re:This is so 2012.

[Rei]

Isn't that now the limiting factor?

So we have 3d printers in stores. Now we need all of the home devices that could potentially need spare parts printed to be available online, preferably in a unified database. You need manufacturer buy-in. Maybe some sort of certification mark that manufacturers can stick on their devices to show that printable replacement part models are freely available. I could use a new cheese compartment door in my fridge right now, for example. And I live in Iceland where shipping times are long and shipping costs / import duties high, so it'd make time and economic sense to print, too. But while having a 3d printer would be great, if the model isn't available, how does that help me?

Of course some companies, like iRobot, rely on profiting off of selling their spare parts.

Home Depot

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't go paying for it with a credit card ...

Dongs

[LookIntoTheFuture]

The new 3D printer has a 9-in. x 5.9-in. x 5.5-in

You could make a wide variety of big colorful dongs with this thing! For... educational uses of course.

Re:Dongs

[felrom]

9-in. x 5.9-in. x 5.5-in will fit an AR-15 lower receiver too. Toys for everyone!

Re:Dongs

[Anonymous Coward]

The new 3D printer has a 9-in. x 5.9-in. x 5.5-in ...
You could make a wide variety of big colorful dongs with this thing!

"Big"?

Re:Dongs

[Anonymous Coward]

dock it together and seal it with epoxy?

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Site says OSX and Windows Vista/later.

Will it work with any Linux software?

Re:Obligatory

[Em Adespoton]

If it works with OS X and Vista, that means you should be able to reverse engineer the protocol and make it work with Linux without too many issues. The drivers seem to work with AutoCAD tools, so my guess is the drivers aren't proprietary either but use a common protocol.

Re:Obligatory

[Em Adespoton]

Oh, and it appears to be a re-branded one of these http://www.flashforge-usa.com/... which say they support Linux. I'm guessing that FlashForge Dreamer drivers for Linux would drive the Idea Builder without much modification.

Re:Obligatory

[Em Adespoton]

Hmm... scratch that; it's not a re-branding, as the Dreamer uses more filament types, is heated, and has a few other goodies missing in the Builder. And it's only $200 more.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

And the dreamer has dual print heads while the Dremel® 3D Idea Builder has one.

Re:Obligatory

[tshawkins]

It is a flashforge dreamer, its just had one extruder removed and the heated printbed plate removed which stops it from being able to print ABS. Most printers have single or dual options. Presumably dremel did not want consumers using ABS plastic which requires the bed to be at 100c and gives off toxic fumes whilst printing. PLA plastic is biodegradable, made from organic polymers (corn) , and prints onto a cold bed at a lower temperature. However it is less durable, but gives off no toxic fumes (smells like waffles whilst it is printing). The products it prints are also food safe to a degree unlike ABS. Dual extruder is tricky to use, so its removal was probaly both a cost and useability move. The software is just rebadged autodesk software, so dremel have had virtualy nothing to do with this device other than deciding the configeration, where the logos went and designing the packaging. You can buy the same setup with dual extruder, heated bed and the software from the original producers for about $1400

Nerds!

[baKanale]

I like how one of the first two things the family in the picture printed appears to be a polyhedral die. I think it's a d12. Very cool!

Novelty

[Anonymous Coward]

The term you're looking for is NOVELTY use - this isn't an insertable grade of polymer, just as none of the commercially produced ones are either.

Re:Novelty

[Anonymous Coward]

Put a condom over it. A lot of people recommend that anyway. It's safer than assuming you got all the bacteria off it. You could clean it really well, and then use older condoms since the consequences of breakage aren't so severe.

Still wouldn't recommend putting any 3-d printed dong into anything though. Most 3-d prints I've seen have grooves on them that could either hide a lot of bacteria, or tear the condom if you go that route.

Not that I have experience or anything...

Re:Novelty

[Anonymous Coward]

I reckon I might go that root.
http://alldownunder.com/australian-slang/dictionary-slang-2.htm

Re:Novelty

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear americans,

Your fear of "bacteria" on everything has no basis in science. Please stop.

regards,
Europe

Re:Novelty

[Rei]

What sort of 3d prints are you looking at?

Perhaps my expectations of 3d printers are too high because I buy from professional 3d printing services rather than using a low-end home 3d printer. They use high end products and sometimes do post-printing finishing work. But the quality of the stuff you can get is truly excellent, and out of a very wide range of materials.

Don't Miss The Point

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great news, I say that as someone on the outside of the 3d printing world who just reads about the stuff. A friend has one and has shown me some of the things she made.

Who cares if has this Spec or that Limitation. Who cares if Makerbot is better for the money or whatever. The important thing is an entry like this will shake the market. Maybe other big names are on the verge of introducing competing products: Black and Decker? HP probably, Apple any rumors? Whirlpool("with just the touch of a button")? LG? I didn't see Dremel coming along here. Others may be waiting to see how they do, Whatever. It's all good: the technology will get more high profile, more use cases will emerge. companies will compete harder, niches will develop. More resources will be expended improving the technology. it will get cheaper and better.

Holy crap we can already 3D print like veins and tissues and stuff i don't even realize, i read about structures being built this way. Maybe on the moon too.
All that and the tech is in it's infancy still.

Who cares about the Specs? I'm just hoping this will throw fuel on the market fire.

Re:Don't Miss The Point

[ColdWetDog]

I'm sorry, this is not the 3D printer you are looking for.

No tissues or organs, no little machines. Nothing earth shattering.

Think Dungeons and Dragons pieces, Star Wars figurines. An occasional spoon. All looking like a low res poly rendering from the 1980's.

It's a toy.

Re:Don't Miss The Point

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize it's not going to print ebola-eating replacement spleens when i get it out of the box.

Think Dungeons and Dragons pieces, Star Wars figurines. An occasional spoon. All looking like a low res poly rendering from the 1980's.

It's a toy.

I totally wish my parents could have bought me something like that when i was young. Now some kid *will* have it and be inspired.
it's all good. People will buy Dremel because it's a household name and Makerbot is not.

I'm not actually Looking for a 3D Printer At All.
You Missed The Point

Re:Don't Miss The Point

[serviscope_minor]

It's a toy.

Bullshit. That's spoken like someone with too little imagination to know what to do with it. There's plenty of useful stuff one can do with a single head PLA only 3D printer. Look for example at how many printers are built with printed parts. Turns out you can build more than just 3D printers with plastic parts. Who knew, eh?

And with a little gingery furnace, one can go from cheap 3D printed plastic t cast aluminium... there are several online guides for this. And so on.

Re:Don't Miss The Point

[CastrTroy]

It's a toy.

Which is fine though. Plenty of people spend plenty of money on "toys" to make this a viable product. $1000 for a 3D printer which is really just a toy isn't all that bad. The XBox One was $500 when it came out. By the time you get a second controller and a few games, you're probably getting close to $800. And the XBox One, or PS4, or any other console is really just a toy. You can't even run your own code on them. You can pretty much just play games. The new iPhone just came out and it's $650 for the cheapest one. And while there are some business uses of an iPhone, the vast majority of people I know with an iPhone use them solely for personal use and could do just as well with a $200 phone (or less).

Personally, I can't see the point in owning a 3D printer. The number of objects that I'd want to print out is quite small. It would make much more sense for me to go down to Home Depot and pay them to print out my parts on a $10,000 printer (assuming such a service existed), because I'd probably get better results and it would cost me less and take me less time. It's the same reason I don't own a photo printer. I can get a much better job done much faster by just taking my memory card into Walmart. If I feel like getting some really high quality prints, I can take them to a better photo place and get them printed better. But there's no way that I would have the money to afford that level of quality for my own personal use.

Re:Don't Miss The Point

[Rei]

And those nerdy kids will grow up playing around with and learning 3d modeling software to be able to make their toys.

This is a good thing.

Re:Don't Miss The Point

[Rei]

Services like that exist online, and they're excellent, albeit rather slow. I personally use iMaterialize because they have such a wide range of material options (everything from rubber to titanium) and finishes (for example, 4 different options for silver), but there's lots of others out there, and some are cheaper.

If you've ever played around with 3d modelling, I definitely recommend giving 3d printing a try, even if just a little test piece. :) Note that plastics are a lot cheaper than metals, although metals look the coolest.

Give me a 3d printer that....

[mark-t]

... has a precision tolerance finer than 2 microns... so it can be used for things where precision and fine detail reallly matter.

And where the material cost per item printed is cheap... and I mean cheap... like cheap as in cheap as dirt, cheap.

And I'll happily throw down a thousand bucks for something like that.

G-Code likely

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably runs on a "dialect" of standard g-code tool paths. I would almost bet it doesn't even plug into a computer but uses a flash drive with the g-code and includes a windows program to create the g-code. Other than the complexity of writing a program to do that, there isn't anything even remotly secret about how to do it. A simple sheet showing the non-standard codes would allow you to do this, and that would likely fit on a single sheet of paper.

HEY NOTCH!!!

[xeno]

The killer app for a commodity 3D printer would be a MineCraft-like interface. I was talking to my teenage kids and their friends about the 3D printer that sits unused in their school lab, and they all complained that the software was incomprehensible. But since they all create amazing structures in MineCraft, I suggested the obvious.... the idea of a crafting UI for 3D design had them jumping up and down yelling “HELL YES we would use that to build amazing things.”

Notch? Are you busy just now? Don't you have some spare cash and free time?
Howzabout a 3D crafting UI that looks like a holodeck room and adopts the standard controls for MineCraft to frame up basic block structures, plus some of the better mod controls for curves, smoothing, and multi-size blocks?

User scenarios would follow something like this:
- Adjust the size of the room you want to work in,
- Rough design using building blocks off the hot bar,
- managing multiple materials or colors from the inventory,
- more complex design with other objects (maybe compound objects) from the crafting table,
- fill/smoothing/spanning following the methods/controls of some of the better mods,
- view/flythrough, save functions, import, export, etc...,
- .... and finally printing.

I’d buy it. Seriously, I would plunk down a grand for the hardware in a heartbeat if the design GUI was fun to use.
(And HP needs to get on the stick, if they want to extend their "ink" market... :)

NOTCH!!! Seriously, you need to get on this.
DREMEL!!!?! Seriously, you need to talk to Notch.

Re:HEY NOTCH!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cura can load sections from minecraft saves on your PC. And 3D print them.

Re:HEY NOTCH!!!

[Slagothor]

I like your idea but what they really need to learn is Sketchup. I really believe it is a cross between your idea and full on CAD programs. Yes, it certainly has a little higher learning curve, but the possibilities are so much greater. You could even create "Minecraft" prefabs and still have the accuracy for small details and such.

Re:HEY NOTCH!!!

[CastrTroy]

This is kind of how I got interested in building levels in Descent. In Descent, all the levels could only be made of cubes. You could make larger rooms by joining cubes together. You could make things look not completely square because you could move the vertices around to make the cubes skewed, but everything was made of 3 dimensional shapes with 6 sides that were all quadrilaterals. It made building levels really easy. You could make a curved hallway by making one side of a cube a bit shorter, and attaching it to another that was the same, and repeating this pattern. And it has tools to make repeating patterns really fast. Once you got the hang of using the tools (really only took a few hours) you could build new levels extremely fast.

Re:HEY NOTCH!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you 100%. But in the meantime, the 123Design software by AutoCAD they are using is really good. I have had students (granted they are on the path to be engineers) pick up 123Design and make functional parts with 10 minutes of instruction. They had never used any kind of CAD software before.

I've used just about every name brand and many lesser known 3D CAD programs, and it by far has the best price/value (free or $10/month for Pro) combination for designing for 3D printers. It is also the easiest I have found for doing intermediate (heading toward complex) designs. The students and I have designed dozens of professional(meaning we were paid by a customer) designs and produced literally thousands of parts (keeping 3 printers working 24/7). All done with the software dremel is bundling.

Re:HEY NOTCH!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

My daughter was using Sketchup in her 8th grade science class last year - kids are getting familiar with these tools for sure.
She took to it way faster than I did.

brick and mortar store sales

[Anonymous Coward]

" it plans brick and mortar store sales this November" ... are they making the stores with a 3d printer?

Re:brick and mortar store sales

[Rei]

Some 3d printing services can print ceramics ;)

woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

now we want milling accesories for it. go fix, dremel!

What's fonts.staticworld.net

[Anonymous Coward]

What's fonts.staticworld.net, and why is it keeping me from the article?