Comparison of 3D Printers
Overview
While there are many advanced 3D printing technologies, it is the low-cost ones that are of primary interest to OSE. The end goal of 3D printing technology is low-end 3D printers able to fabricate more advanced designs semi-autonomously. Achieving this Digital Fabrication objective has fairly wide-reaching economic implications, particularly when printed objects are used to bootstrap other manufacturing processes. (see Lost-PLA Casting)
The low-cost (sometimes called 'consumer-grade') 3D printers have been developed not by the corporate additive manufacturing developers, but by researchers and DIY enthusiasts mimicking the methods of commercial processes. The RepRap and Fab@Home projects both started with the goal of creating open source, desktop-sized, additive manufacturing platforms. RepRap was designed to use Fused Filament Fabrication (Compare with FDM), extruding ABS and eventually PLA. These materials allowed the production of structurally useful parts, allowing partial self-replication of RepRap systems. This has lead to their proliferation and mutation toward better and more robust designs through user-driven 'natural selection' process (A principle which will hopefully be applied to OSE designs!)
Research
Machines
Consumer-grade 3D printers
- RepRap
- Fab@Home
- MakerBot
- Ultimaker
- 3D Ceramic
Commercial-grade 3D printers (typically >$5k)
- ZCorp
Spreadsheet
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApN4BXK1pgnKdFdXenFkbnZxR1pIUGljR09MOWlLbkE&hl=en_US edit spreadsheet] *
Techniques
- ZCorp
- Fused Deposition Modeling
- Solar Sintering