3D-Printers Arrive at the Home Market
We all said that one day 3D-Printers would hit the home market. That day is NOW.
Just get a look at this:
Priced at £700, the Velleman K8200 will allow customers to print anything they want, provided it is below 20cm³. For example, if you want a new mobile phone case or lose a chess piece, you can simply print another one.
3D printers take a virtual model designed on a computer and then layer 0.5mm-thick slices of plastic to build up an object. A mobile phone case would take about 30 minutes to print.
…The plastic comes in black, white, blue, red, orange, green, yellow and pink, but you can only use one colour at a time while printing. According to Maplin’s website: “If you want your creation to be multicoloured you can print it in separate pieces and attach them together later. You can’t swap the cartridge in the middle of a print.”
Replacement cartridges cost £30 for 1kg of the plastic resin, and the printer itself is the size of a mid-range laser printer.
Mr Meakin added, “Until now, the cost of 3D printers limited their use to the professional market. However, the Velleman K8200 kit has enabled us to introduce 3D printing to the mass market.”
Advertisement“We selected this model primarily because it offers high performance printing at an affordable price, making it accessible to our customers.”
