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Mattel Unveils $300 3D Printer (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: Perhaps in an attempt to get out ahead of the consumer 3D printing market, which has allowed popular toys such as Legos to be replicated, Mattel today announced it would begin shipping its $300 fused filament fabricator machine in October. Mattel's ThingMaker at-home toy-making device, reinvents the company's iconic 1960s toy by the same name. The new ThingMaker allows users to upload design files via Mattel's proprietary Design App, which works on Android or iOS devices. The 3D printer can then print single-part toys or print hundreds of different parts to be assembled into toys using ball-and-socket joints. Mattel's ThingMaker Design App is based on Autodesk's Spark, an open 3D printing platform that provides extensible APIs for each stage of the 3D printing workflow. Because it's based on an open architecture, the ThingMaker Design App also works with other 3D printers; it is available now and free to download for iOS and Android devices.
I won't have to buy those 1K Makerbot shitty ones after all!
Priceless.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
but only if it can print itself!
Way back in the day, they came out with the Barbie Digital Camera. It was the cheapest digital camera on the market by far. Many people who had no interest in Barbie bought them. It was $79 when most cameras were $300+, they got the price down by, among other things, using damaged DRAM chips.
http://www.superkids.com/aweb/...
How much would it cost to print a RealDoll-type sex toy on one of these?
I'm asking for a friend.
Trolling is a art,
At least, it was for a six-year-old kid. It fell victim to the "maybe we shouldn't have kids handling 400-degree hot molds" mindset, with an added dose of "maybe all those volatile organic fumes aren't the greatest thing for your kid to be huffing".
Let's hope the new one is worth of the name.
Aren't the fumes from these things still kinda dangerous? I'm just saying in not 100% confident parents can be trusted to use them in a well ventilated place
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Can I print replacement battery covers with it? That would be pretty useful. The finish looks pretty good I wonder if the tolerances are good enough for the clips to work.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Looks like can only print from a propriety library of models. Associated cost?
At least until soneone hacks the firmware to allow Repetier control.
Not with any current 3d printing technology, at least. Give the tech a few more years, and maybe...
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Lots of people will point out the many problems with this system, but from an initial glance(*):
1) The filament spools are not chipped. You can get filament from other vendors and rewind them on your spools. Chances are, other vendors will notice this and start selling ThingMaker spools.
2) The FAQ states that if you don't have a printer, there are many places that will print parts for you. I assume this means that the output format *isn't* proprietary, possibly a bog-standard stl file that you can have printed anywhere.
If, and this is a big if, the heads can be easily replaced, then this could be quite an exciting development in 3d printing. As hackers, we'll be able to get cheap used 3d ThingMakers off of eBay for decades.
(*) Please correct me if any of these are wrong
Can it heat up in excess of 300 degrees and make Creeple People?
Does it come with a lightbulb to cook my 3d-printed cupcakes?
Lawsuits in 3...2...1
FTFY:
Not with any current cheap 3d printing technology, at least.
We have a six figure priced printer in the shop where I work, which is actual now several years old, and it can easily make the tolerances for Lego bricks, and with several materials. It would be a waste of money though even with the price of Lego bricks. Our is mainly used for things that can't easily be CNC milled or for non-critical parts when the CNC mills are backlogged.
3D printer toy? So the age of industry is over... Now we need to start printing human organs instead of virtual money. SERIOUSLY.
Looks like Ken is finally gonna get some junk.
Anybody want a peanut?
"Our [printer] is mainly used for things that can't easily be CNC milled or for non-critical parts when the CNC mills are backlogged." Ie, when the CNC mills are making Legos to play with.
It is dark brown, lumpy and coming out of the bottom of the doll figure, on the far left.
Nice, but I expect it will use proprietary everything, from the feed-stock to the nozzles to the software and whatever else they can make non-standard...and my guess is that it'll all be heavily DRM-protected as well.
If I'm wrong, great, but knowing Mattel and the current state of the market I won't hold my breath.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
FTFY:
Not with any current cheap 3d printing technology, at least.
We have a six figure priced printer in the shop where I work, which is actual now several years old, and it can easily make the tolerances for Lego bricks, and with several materials. It would be a waste of money though even with the price of Lego bricks. Our is mainly used for things that can't easily be CNC milled or for non-critical parts when the CNC mills are backlogged.
I'm curious. What are the tolerances of your high dollar printer? What is the actual cost of printing a lego not counting the cost of the machine?
That's only $100 per D!
Okay, not really free. But I thought the only part of a 3D printer that a talented tinkerer couldn't build is the controller/software/firmware and the extruder. Does this really cost $300? What are the pitfalls of making your own printer with an extremely minimal kit (only an extruder and a chip)? Getting compatibility between the parts would take bloody ages, but is there any intrinsic reason why this doesn't work, or is it merely difficult (like restoring a car)?
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Cañ someoñe please trañslate that iñto Eñglish?
The tolerances for Lego are at only 2 microns. Still think it "easily" makes it? Considering the printer you describe is a few years old, I'd be surprised if it is even within an order of magnitude of that tolerance. I know of absolutely no 3d printer, at any price, that can reliably create parts at the levels of precision that can be ordinarily met with injection molding.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
He said, "An 'edge is an 'edge, he only chopped it down because it spoilt his view, and what's Reaper moaning about?"
People do build there own, and there are about a jillion web sites with more information, including detailed plans in some cases.
A main reason it's not cheaper is that tolerances add up. If you have .05" of slop in your screw drive, and 0.05" in your motors, and 0.05 in your bearings, and 0.05 sideways slop in your Z axis, that means each layer may be 0.2 inches off from the last - almost a quarter inch. That's totally unusable. To get 0.001" or better on all your moving parts means you'll be buying some very specific parts, and probably spending some money.
Now suppose you could spend 8 hours building and adjusting it, and save $250. That's $30 / hour. If you're skilled, you can probably make more than $30 / hour at your job, so you're better off working those hours and buying one.
As I said, building one is certainly feasible. It's neither cheap nor quick, and the manufactured ones have more of the glitches worked out.
What we may see more of is people buying cheap ones and making their own improvements, like polishing certain parts with a Dremel, adding springs to take up slack, etc.
That said I'm somewhat surprised that LEGO haven't produced their own printer. It'd be no good for precision parts but I'm sure they could produce something that integrates with models - allows kids to print exoskeletons, trees or whatever to go with some set.
Bzzzt, WRONG!!!!
There is no such thing as Legos, you buffoon.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've seen that reported as the mold tolerance, which is not the same as the plastic tolerance which is more on the order of 10-20 microns. Some engineers at my work place got an argument about this once, and bought a small pack of Lego bricks and it is closer to 50 microns for wall thickness and larger for some of the big dimensions (as in the full range of values, not the standard deviation). This makes sense, because if they need 2 micron accuracy to work over all dimensions, pieces warmed up by your hand would not fit ones at room temperature.
20-40 micron printing is pretty common now, and even for several years with laser sintering. Stratasys has had 16 micron resolution commercially available since at least 2011-2012ish. One of the advertised uses now for sintered metal is for making inserts to be used in injection molding. Places that need higher precision still have to make their own instead of using off the shelf equipment, but research printers have been doing 10 micron or smaller precision for nearly 15 years now. When we have some thing with a very small feature size, on the order of 30-50 microns, we have a connection with with a university team that will rent out use of their micro laser sintering setup for occasional runs. Although it only has a 2x2x1 cm working volume, unlike the much larger 16 micron setups.
16 microns is the resolution, and it can do thin walls pretty well, so that becomes precision in some places, but depends on exactly what dimension you are talking about. If a typical brick is 2.5 g... then the price of printing for materials is about a dollar if I remember correctly, and I might not be remembering ABS specifically. But there is also the cost of the the shop guys who have to interact with the machine and set it up, etc., which even if amortized over many parts, can still add up quick.
The solution is to melt down lego bricks to provide the plastic filament to print out your own. Aside from electricity it's the price is very competitive with actual lego.
And can I make creepy crawlers with it?
The article says that the design / print software is based on an open software package and it works with other 3D printers.
If the software uses standard protocols to talk to printers, that suggests that printer accepts the standard protocol and can therefore be controlled by other software.
Print the parts you need, when you need.... LEGO 3D
YES!!!!!!!
Got two of the Barbie cameras for my kids at a discount store for around $20.
They were indestructible and took ok photos compared to other $200 cameras.
What are the X, Y, and Z microns? What are my infill options? How about supports? Does it have a heated bed?
I looked around on the internet and didn't find any of the information which says what quality of printer this is. The samples look pretty but then again they're the best that could be done by professionals using perfectly tuned equipment.
My 3D printer was $350 and does 15 microns on the X and Y and down to 50 microns on the Z. I can control my infill. I can download from various file sharing sites and make my own designs.
Yeah. Printer for kids. Download Mattel stuff. Sounds great. Until the kids get bored waiting for a toy to print and parents price filament.
FTA: "...proprietary Design App, which works on Android or iOS devices"
Does that mean you must design on smartphones?
First of all, ABS plastic such as what is used for Lego isn't affected that much by temperature change at the scales that things like Lego are made, in general the difference in size for that tiny a temperature change would be about on the order of a fraction of a micron. Secondly, the expansion or contraction for larger temperature changes could indeed pose a problem for some Lego pieces to fit together if they were made of something other than ABS. A Lego piece taken out of a freezer that has been there for some time, for instance, may have a difficult time fitting room temperature pieces because the former has become more rigid, and connectivity will certainly be affected by the temperature variance.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The thermal expansion coefficient for ABS is about 80e-6 per K. A 1 cm piece with a temperatures change of 5 K would change length by 4 microns, invalidating a 2 micron tolerance, assuming the same tolerance applied to the large dimensions. A freezer to room temp give you more like a 40 K swing, which would be 30 microns, and closer to the tolerance given by the above AC.
I like my wooden Makerbot
Yes, but but ABS plastic is flexible enough at room temperature to accommodate such tiny deviations. The example I mentioned of putting a piece of Lego in the freezer and then trying to fit it with another piece at room temperature would indeed show difficulty in fitting, in part due to thermal contraction, and in part because frozen ABS plastic is more rigid, and less tolerant of less than perfect fits.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Do you seriously think the tolerances on battery covers aren't forgiving enough?
Wired had some blog piece where they measure pieces and got a standard deviation of 25 microns. A standard deviation would never cut it as a tolerance at shops I've worked with, which either expect all pass on a pass fail test for smaller, important runs, or at least a pass rate of 90-95% for cheaper, volume stuff. So that would be closer to two standard deviations. Those tolerances are pretty typical for small ABS parts (and similar to many machined parts), assuming you do quality control. The expensive part is not necessarily finding an injection shop that is way above average quality, but paying for the quality control and contract details to make sure the shop pays attention. And it is not like the same tolerance applies to every dimension.
Mattel still exists?
Er... I forgot to mention that that size variance of a few microns would actually be across the whole brick.... while any individual stud would deviate in position by no more than a fraction of that. The small variances that occur with only a few degrees of difference are well accommodated by the flexibility of the ABS plastic itself.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's Swell!
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$300 for the printer
$25 for the filament and it does a very limited number of items.
Considering that it's aimed at children who will have no concept at limiting how many items that they will print (unless it's really slow and they get bored by it) then they will make their money selling refills.