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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.
you know its got to be good
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?
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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.
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Now when I massacre something with the cutting wheel I can make another and ruin it again
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.
You can date it from the marketing photo. In 2014, no one goes 'WOW' and points at 3D printers anymore.
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.
Do you have ESP?
Just don't go paying for it with a credit card ...
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.
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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 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!
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
My mid-90s Dremel kicks ass.
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
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: .... and finally printing.
- 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...,
-
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.
I think not...(*poof*)
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.
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The trick is to grasp that at high RPMs, it's not pressure that drives the work. A light touch will make more progress.
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.
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.
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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.
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Some 3d printing services can print ceramics ;)
I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her.