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Cube: 3D home printer starts shipping in days
- sbierwagen 14y agoUh oh, it doesn't mention head speed, or volume throughput. That's a bad sign. The frame doesn't even look as stiff as the Makerbot Replicator, which is pretty miserably slow compared to some of the bleeding edge designs. (ORDbot, Utilimaker) 3d printers with small motors and light frames can be excruciatingly, unusably slow. It also doesn't say how large the cartridges are. Or how much they cost. It's also got a pretty small build volume, and a completely proprietary toolchain, including model files. (???)
- wxl 14y agoIt actually does mention the price of the cartridges, in the store. $50 each, with discounts if you buy more than one.
- sbierwagen 14y agoAh, so it does. Still doesn't say how big they are. ("1 Cartridge prints 13 to 14 mid-sized creations" is a magnificently useless piece of information. The only number that matters here is kilograms. How many kilograms does it mass? Why doesn't it say?)
- mhb 14y agoIt also doesn't give the x or y resolution, unless I missed it.
- nrp 14y agoI'm excited to see what happens here. 3D Systems is releasing a printer with a proprietary filament cartridge[0], proprietary interface, and commercial ecosystem of downloadable solid model files[1] into a world that has inexpensive commodity filament spools[2], open interfaces and software[3], and a community of mostly open source solid models[4]. Can they really put the cat back in the bag? [0] http://cubify.com/cube/store.aspx http://cubify.com/cube/store.aspx [1] http://cubify.com/store/model_list.aspx?searchtext=&minprice=&maxprice= http://cubify.com/store/model_list.aspx?searchtext=&minp... [2] http://ultimachine.com/catalog/print-materials http://ultimachine.com/catalog/print-materials [3] http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page [4] http://www.thingiverse.com/ http://www.thingiverse.com/
- stephengillie 14y agoCould the Cube be used to make replacement filament cartridges for itself?
- sbierwagen 14y agoCan an inkjet printer make more ink cartridges?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- stephengillie 14y agoNo, the 2d printer can't print 3d objects.
- sbierwagen 14y ago-3 points? Ha ha, HN, humorless as always. The joke, here, of which there are two, is that of course you can't print another cartridge. You'd spend 5kg of plastic to print a 4.9kg cartridge. The second joke is that while you could conceivably print a cartridge housing, and fill it with counterfeit filament, it still wouldn't work. This because Cube uses the same business model as HP or Stratasys (I assume) where the printer's cheap, but the cartridges are expensive. Both HP and Stratasys use cartridges with chips in them that keep track of how much filament's been used, and it's probably too much to hope that Cube cartridges will be as easy to hack[1] as Stratasys cartridges. A $5 cryptocard chip more than pays for itself if it doubles your profit margin, and if the printer phones home, it'll be real hard to break the scheme. 1: http://haveblue.org/?p=938 http://haveblue.org/?p=938
- ianterrell 14y agoRecipe: Print one filament cartridge, fill it with remaining filament. Repeat until you have several empty filament cartridges.
- reustle 14y ago
- switz 14y agoThis is cool, but I'm more intrigued by the Solidoodle[1]. It's less than half the price ($499) – a much better entry level for the average consumer. It's not as pretty or have wifi, but it does have an extra half inch of print space. [1] http://www.solidoodle.com/ http://www.solidoodle.com/
- prezjordan 14y agoI'm skeptical of the Solidoodle. Why on earth is it so cheap? And it looks of such high quality.
- sbierwagen 14y ago$499 model doesn't have a heated bed, which means it can only print in PLA, or very, very small ABS prints. It doesn't specify what the head speed is, so think "slow". 50mm/s, if that.
- kenjackson 14y agoThe one with the heated bed is only $50 more. So still cheap. I was looking for reviews and the only thing I could find was this one: http://renaissance-engineer.net/2012/03/08/how-time-flies/ http://renaissance-engineer.net/2012/03/08/how-time-flies/ "A review of the Solidoodle after numerous hours of printing. But for a few tuneup adjustments here and there, it has been problem free. If only there was a heated build platform the prints would be totally awesome (instead, as you might expect with ABS on a cold piece of acrylic, the first few layers are not even)." I might take the plunge and get the $549 version. Although I must admit, I have no idea what I'd make with it.
- catch23 14y agoI'm kind of wondering how a 3D printer could be so expensive ($500). I've made homebrew cnc machines before at around $200 or so.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
- ryanfitz 14y agoI liked the design of their pages so I went to look at the source and noticed every page is wrapped in a top level form tag, can someone explain why they would do this?
- MortenK 14y agoIt's because the site is made with ASP.NET webforms, which requires that top level form tag.
- metabren 14y agoIt's because they used ASP.NET to create the site. More: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3038217/why-does-asp-net-wrap-the-page-in-a-form http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3038217/why-does-asp-net-...
- jonny_eh 14y agoWhile this is very cool (minus the proprietary drawbacks), what can I make with this $1300 printer that I couldn't buy for $1300? I would have liked to have seen that in their marketing material.
- minouye 14y agoThese look amazing--does anyone know how the resolution compares to say a MakerBot?
- ricardobeat 14y agoThe Ultimaker prints down to 0.1mm, vs 0.25mm on this one. I'm curious how they achieve the smooth look with a standard resolution - maybe it's just the pictures.
- daenz 14y agoWow, I didn't realize how high the resolution is on the Ultimaker: http://i.imgur.com/NQHLd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/NQHLd.jpg I've been shopping around for 3d printers for a few months now, and this is the best resolution I've seen.
- nrp 14y agoAs far as I can tell, there aren't any closeup pictures or videos of actual prints on the Cubify website. The images all appear to be renders. That should be a good clue as to the print quality. I saw them in action at CES, and the quality was pretty poor compared to what the Replicators at the Makerbot booth were doing. Perhaps they haven't improved since then.
- carlcoryell 14y agoWindows only: The cover photo shows a MacBook Air, but the tech specs say the software requires Windows operating systems.
- darxius 14y agoI caught on to that too. I can't see this reaching a whole lot of hackers if it's a Windows only device. Maybe someone will port the software to Linux/OSX.
- cjdavis 14y ago.. or Cube makes their printer compatible with one of the many OSS toolchains that already exist. Why would people bother with reverse engineering their proprietary (and expensive) system, when you could go ahead and spend the time improving the fully open systems that are out there?
- tinco 14y ago... because it might work better? Have you been living under a rock the past ten years? How do you even envision industrial designers improving 3d printing software?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nextparadigms 14y agoYeah, why do so many developers show a Macbook Air these days when 90% of the PC's are Windows laptops? It's especially weird when it doesn't even run on Macs, like in this case.
- RandallBrown 14y agobecause a Macbook Air is probably the nicest looking computer on the market right now.
- redwood 14y agoPeople haven't yet been turned on to the market of enriching everything them around them with pretty finishings. This is one of the great potentials of even these mini-3d printers: you can truly de-homogenize your indoor environment and make it very interesting. I'm inspired by Black Rock City to see all the forgotten parts of our lives more beautiful. 3d printing will help :)
- sargun 14y agoI wish that the print surface was larger. 5.5" is just an awkward number, I would love if it was something like 6, or 8.
- teamonkey 14y agoFor aesthetic reasons, or because 5.5" limits the usefulness in some way?
- sargun 14y ago5.5" limits the usefulness, a lot of the parts I want to make are going to be 6.1+" - I'm primary thinking of things like cable holders, replacement HDD holders, etc..
- sebastianavina 14y agoI guess it's more like 140 mm
- free 14y agoThis looks quite interesting. I am not much informed of it. Can anyone share an overview of the technology underneath? Also what kind of things it can print, what and how much the raw material would cost? Also the page show the image of a sandal in free creations section. Would it be possible use it as an actual footwear?
- spacemanaki 14y agoIf they're using PLA or ABS, I don't think footwear usable due to comfort. (ABS is the same plastic that Legos are made of, so imagine how inflexible they would be, and PLA is going to be similar) Given that the build envelope is only 5.5 cubic inches, I also don't think you could actually make adult size footwear.
- tantalor 14y agoAwkward name collision with the Google Maps app from 12 hours earlier.
- hackermom 14y ago"Material: Tough Recyclable Plastic" - Does anyone happen to know exactly WHAT plastic it uses? I'm also curious about the whole activation requirement for the printer. It made me raise an eyebrow.
- nickpinkston 14y agoProbably ABS - that's the most common, but PC, PP and PLA have all been used before.
- nextparadigms 14y agoWill only their designs work with their printer? Or is it some kind of open format, so I could get 3D models from somewhere else and then build it with their printer?
- nextparadigms 14y agoThe MakerBot Replicator is 50% more expensive, but it can make larger objects and in 2 colors. I think it's the best one out there currently. They say they have 15,000 object models in their catalog on http://www.thingiverse.com http://www.thingiverse.com . How fast can these things make the objects, though? Does it take minutes or hours? Could you build a small business selling toys and stuff with one of them?
- nickpinkston 14y agoTypically speed depends on how much material the object uses, the complexity and the build quality. For small, low-fi object it could take 10 minutes. For something the size of a baseball, it's probably about an hour or so, but for the largest FDM (this style of 3D Printing) machines it's been known to take days on really big builds. On other commercials machines, like SLA/SLS, that use lasers to quickly build material, they're more based about how tall the part is when it's built and the detail required. Small business wouldn't be based around just printing - this is really tough. You're really going to need to offer other value-adds to actually make money as small plastic 3DP parts are basically a commodity at this point.