

Makerbot killer? Ultimaker: There’s a New 3D Printer in Town - riboflavin
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/08/ultimaker-theres-a-new-3d-printer-in-town.html

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mhb
Does anyone make useful things with these? How come the article doesn't give
the accuracy and resolution or are people just printing crude shower curtain
rings really quickly?

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thezilch
My friend fabricates bottle openers, for starters, which go for as little as
USD$4-5 on etsy.com.

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rexreed
How much time does it take? What are the materials cost? What are the
operating costs? How much does the machine cost? Just trying to do a bit of
break-even calculation and figure out what the profitability point is on a
per-item basis... since I might do the same [grin]

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jfoutz
back of the envelope, a thingomatic is $1300. If you get it working well,
it'll happily print for days unattended. electricity and plastic i'd guess is
less than a buck an hour. ABS plastic is dirt cheap. less than $20 per pound,
stuff you print weighs a fraction of an ounce.

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puzzler314
When is someone going to develop a quality desktop 3D printer? I know I would
be willing to pay many times the price of a Makerbot for a proper printer.

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riboflavin
I think you can get a "real" desktop 3D printer for about $5K these days. But
the consumer build-it-yourself designs are doing reasonably well, and actually
give very, very good results - the catch is you have to be willing to put a
_lot_ of time in.

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riboflavin
I guess I would also note that these guys are all kind of headed in the
direction of competing with the "real" desktop 3D printers, but yeah, they
won't be there for a while. I wrote some further thoughts here:
[http://justindunham.net/2011/08/where-is-open-
source-3d-prin...](http://justindunham.net/2011/08/where-is-open-
source-3d-printing-going/)

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karl_nerd
Higher resolution, but further from a finished product: Junior Veloso's
experiments: [http://3dhomemade.blogspot.com/2011/03/high-resolution-
compa...](http://3dhomemade.blogspot.com/2011/03/high-resolution-compared-to-
fdm-kit.html)

He's using light from a projector to harden liquid resin.

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grannyg00se
Whatever it is, it looks a clunky mess. This is not the leap in 3D printing I
was hoping for.

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thezilch
To each his own, I suppose, as I rather like the build of exposed wires,
bolts, rivets, and the likes -- I'm not alone.

I'm not sure what "clunky mess" means or how device asthetics correlate to
"leap[s]" (in ability?) in 3D printing.

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grannyg00se
I was actually referring to the produced piece that came out of it. It seems
to have rather poor resolution, and there are what appear to be stringy
anomalies and uneven portions. The machine itself is not relevant to me. I
don't care if that looks clunky. But if the produced piece is a clunky looking
mess, that's a problem.

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starwed
Ah, "clunky" tends to be used to refer to ungainly _machines_ , which is one
reason most people reading your original post will assume you're discussing
the aesthetics of the printer and not its products.

The other is of course that the title of the submission is about the printer,
so using "it" without further clarification will not be read as referring to
something mentioned only in the article.

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Simucal
Could anyone tell what it was making in the video?

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Cushman
On their blog they say it's a Mendel part:
<http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1768>

