The product just launched on Kickstarter and has surpassed its goal of $30,000. The extruder itself should work on most major 3D printers including RepRap machines and Makerbots. The extruder itself attaches to the standard extruder tip of the printer and then you have to set the specifications for various substances, including the aforementioned Nutella.

The extruder costs $249 for early birds and uses disposable syringes to hold the pastes. Rubber tubing carries to paste to the machine which is then pushed out like the standard plastic filament normally used by these printers.

Created by Charles Mire, John Mardlin, and Andrew Finkle of Waterloo, Ontario, the product is a reaction to the dearth of usable paste extruders. “Paste printing is a difficult problem. Many attempts at an affordable paste extruder have been made previously,” they write. “By focusing on reinventing only the parts of the printer that are involved with the delivery and extrusion of the material means that we’re able to move faster, and develop a better product.”

The product will ship in October.

Source: Techcrunch.com

The first in the family is a new, smaller Replicator called the Mini. Pettis called it the “consumer 3D printer” with one-touch 3D printing as well as printing via mobile devices. It includes Wi-Fi and a built-in camera so you can monitor the things you build on the device. It also requires no leveling to print in PLA filament. You can also share photos of your device taken from inside the Mini thanks to a built-in camera. The Mini has an easy-to-maintain extruder that snaps in and out of the device. It costs $1,379 and will ship in the spring. “It’s kind of a big deal,” said Pettis.

The company also announced the MakerBot Replicator (actually the fifth generation of the device), a prosumer machine that prints in PLA filament. It has an 11% larger build volume (8x10x6 inches), faster build times, and has 100-micron layer resolution. A 3.5-inch screen on the device allows you to print right from it and preheat the printer or change the filament. You can connect to the machine via Wi-Fi, USB stick, Ethernet, or USB. It also allows you to access your own personal 3D object library and includes a small camera to monitor your print progress as well an instant build plate leveling system. It is available today for $2,899 and will ship in a few weeks.

They also showed the new MakerBot Z18, a huge replicator that can make objects at 12x12x18 inches – a truly gigantic build envelope. Pettis said that the company would use the device to make MakerBots. It has an enclosed build chamber and prints in PLA.

The company has also updated the desktop app for monitoring and controlling your printer as well as a mobile app that sends alerts when things happen on the printer and in the cloud.

After dedicating his presentation to all the MakerBot operators around the world, Pettis also announced a partnership with Softkinetic, a 3D sensor manufacturer to create the “futuristic 3D scanners of tomorrow.”

“Makerbot is an innovation company. We innovate so others can innovate,” he said. “We’re a manufacturing education in a box.”

Pettis announced that the company has sold more than 44,000 MakerBots and currently has 450 employees around the world. He expects to see a million MakerBots “in the distance.” There are also more than 218,000 digital designs uploaded to and 48 million downloads from the company’s 3D digital design sharing platform, Thingiverse.

Pettis also described the success of their two retail stores in Boston and Manhattan as well as the new store in Greenwich, CT. Each store has a 3D photo booth where customers can scan and print their own heads and purchase MakerBots and plastic filament. Finally Pettis announced MakerBot Entertainment, a set of toys and character models that users can buy and print at home. The products are part of the MakerBot’s burgeoning 3D model shopping experience.

In short, MakerBot updated their entire line and has proven itself, again, to be the Apple of the 3D printing industry. More as we get it.

Source: Techcrunch.com

So pardon me while I burst into flames.

Luckily, nothing did.

Instead, as I sat in the audience last night, I was struck just how exciting the proceedings were. Bre Pettis, CEO and a former school teacher, came out coughing, saying “Cool,” dressed in black like a nerdy Johnny Cash. He had a lot to say and his presentation was, in some strange way, a near-perfect facsimile of an Apple keynote: the amazing stuff the company is doing (3D-printed hands, soccer balls that students in the third world kick around and then use to light their homes at night), the retail spaces they’ve opened throughout the Northeast. The sales, the total employees, the dross that borders on self promotion but is a necessary part of the CE dance.

Then there was some information on their MakerBot Academy, an effort to push MakerBots into every classroom. “My parents bought me an Apple II+,” said Pettis, comparing his plans to another major hardware player that pushed their product into classrooms before the business world knew what was happening.

Arguably, the home PC market and the home 3D printer markets are, in a way, opposed. Home computers can do anything while 3D printers can only makeanything. However, 3D printers allow for the imagination to run rampant. By creating things out of thin air they are a high-tech magic wand, a technology that allows us to hack the physical world in the same way Apple II users hacked the digital.

MakerBot products do two things right: first, they mirror the best practices of the CE giants. They are simple, easy-to-use, and offer intuitive, free software solutions. The segmentation of the products into Mini (for everyone), the Replicator (for the prosumer), and the ultra-large Z18 (for the small manufacturing shop) is spot-on and the trade dress – the sexy design, the cartridge-like filament holders, and the removable extruders move the 3D printer from a wonky, home-brew object of nerd veneration to a usable product that anyone with a rudimentary understanding of coffee makers can use.

MakerBot also owns the conversation when it comes to 3D printers. While the tinkerers online scream “Sell-out!”, Pettis is defining the face of 3D printing for the world. Through branding, design, and enough open source software and hardware to remain dangerous, he is selling a world where 3D printers are as ubiquitous as samurai swords were in Kill Bill – familiar tools that everyone has and everyone understands but few can use with precision or effect.

I’m a proponent of 3D printing, as you well know. I’ve owned a MakerBot for a few years now and it’s changed the way I think of how things are built and expanded my skill set in the way my original Atari 800XL all those years ago taught me that computers weren’t scary, and that they could be a source of pleasure and a true calling. A company that changes the world at CES is a rare treat. Everything else at this circus is a sideshow. MakerBot is the real deal.

Source: Techcrunch.com