The project is two-pronged. First, Spark will exist as a platform that users can build upon and use to render 3D prints. Based on this platform, Autodesk will produce a simple stereolithographic printer for an estimated $5,000. The plans will be available to anyone who wants to build the unit themselves.

According to a blog post on the site:

Spark is an open 3D printing platform that will make it easier for hardware manufacturers, software developers, materials scientists, product designers, and more to participate in and benefit from this technology. Spark connects digital information to 3D printers in a new and streamlined way, making it easier to visualize prints and optimize them without trial and error, while also broadening the range of materials that can be used for printing. And because the Spark platform is open, everyone can use its building blocks to further push the limits of 3D printing and drive fresh innovation.

Autodesk needs to enter the desktop printer space. Stratasys announced solid revenue thanks to their acquisition of MakerBot and 3D Systems, another industrial maker, is busy trying to grab the home user. Why? Because industrial printers are prohibitively costly and are sold with a lot of overhead. Home 3D printers are basically commodity devices, like any HP inkjet.

Here’s hoping that the Spark will help grow the stereolithography market considerably and that it becomes the Android of 3D printing. Printers need standards and given the massive changes going on in the community, a bit of stability will be quite welcome.

Source: Techcrunch.com

A few years later I got a dot-matrix printer and Print Shop. Up went the long, flowery banners (“Welcome home, Mom!”) and birthday cards. Fast-forward further and I was using a primitive desk top publishing app to make flyers for my “Acoustic Folk Poetry” band that I started with my buddy Rick. Then I mastered CDs, made DVDs of my wedding, and fired up a 3D printer that could churn out copies of my head. All of those were like making love outside Hogwarts – surprisingly close to magic. That changed over the past decade – I was probably most excited by the iPhone – but almost everything we see these days is an iteration of the old CPU/screen/input system paradigm. Nothing since has truly amazed me. Until now.

Now we have real magic. It’s here. It’s not always perfect nor is it quite consumer-ready but the $1,400 Makerbot Digitizer is one of the coolest things I’ve seen this decade.

The Digitizer is essentially a turntable, a webcam, and some lasers. It uses Makerbot’s conveyor app to control the motion of objects on the turntable and then scans the points generated by the laser during the rotation. It works best with light, matte objects like ceramics, clays, and non-glossy plastics but with a little glare-reducing baby powder you can scan just about everything as long as its taller than two inches and small enough to fit on the platform.

To scan you simply load up the Digitizer software – an excellent, intuitive system that should be a model for all 3D printer and scanner makers – and, once you calibrate the system using an included, laser-cut object, you press Digitize. Nine minutes later you have a scan. The system interpolates missing information which can be good or bad, depending on the lighting, and then asks if you want to take a photo of your object. You then slide away a filter over the camera to reveal the bare webcam, shoot your, photo, and then share or print your object.

The process is addicting. When you put one object on you want to put another and another. Sharing these objects is an amazing feeling – it’s essentially the equivalent of dot-matrix teleportation. It will be amazing, then, when we get to the laser printed version of object teleportation.
Are the scans perfect? No. Because of vagaries of materials, reflections, and ambient light a perfect scan is impossible. This scan, for example is far from a perfect replica of the original statute. The statue itself has tarnished to an even, matte finish but even with some effort I couldn’t get all of the detail. The Digitizer is like a mimeograph machine rather than a true scanner. It grabs only the important parts of an image and reproduces the rest the best it can. For example, the scanner couldn’t tell what to do with the lens on this OMO camera, below, and so essentially gave up, filling it in. I was able to scan the lens by turning the camera on its side.

Take a look at this statue scan. I printed it fairly small just as a test but it grabbed a certain amount of detail on the statue but elided quite a bit more. In the end I created an approximate, not an exact, copy of the statue. Or take this beer stein for example. The handle sort of disintegrated but I suspect I could have gotten a far better scan if I dusted it down in baby powder. Scanning requires work and trade-offs but, in the end, you get approximately what you’re looking for.

Is the system perfect? Yes and no. When it works it works wonderfully. However, I’ve had some minor hang-ups in OS X that the Makerbot team as seen and is working on fixing. That said, I got a good scan 95% of the time and most of the errors were my own fault caused by excitement or ignorance of good scanning technique. You can see more of my scans on Thingiverse.

At $1,400 the system is also expensive. While I didn’t take apart the case it’s clear that the R&D and engineering that went into this – plus the fact that it was made entirely in Brooklyn – add a premium price to what is essentially a solid webcam and some Class 1 lasers. The hardcore among you will scoff at the price but when you want your scanner to work the first time, right out of the box, this product can’t be beat. There are better, far more expensive scanners out there but this hits the sweet spot at the intersections affordability, usability, and utility.

Can you do this all yourself? Absolutely. A Kinect, a webcam, some lasers, and even your iPhone can create passable 3D models. But nothing I’ve seen can consistently produce quality results in a package that is nearly foolproof and surprisingly robust. I could imagine an archeologist taking this device to digs, an artist setting this up in a studio, or an engineer using this to model aerodynamics. It’s tough enough to withstand rough treatment by kids and adults and the quality, while in no way perfect, is close enough for the vast majority of uses.

What the Digitizer gets right is that it hides away all of the vagaries of 3D scanning and just leaves the magic. The system itself looks like something Jeff Bridges would use in Tron and the lasers, the ticking turntable, and the black case make it clear that this object is from the near future. This product leaves almost every other home computing advance in the dust and I feel like a kid again, amazed at hard drives, printers, and the ability to create things out of thin air.

Source: Techcrunch.com

First, I’d recommend the Makerbot Replicator 2X, an “experimental” Makerbot that can print using corn-starch-based PLA and plastic ABS. Being able to print in both materials is vitally important if you want to make high quality items and each material has its different qualities. For example, you can print translucent objects with PLA but not ABS and ABS objects are far more resilient than PLA objects.

At $2,799 it’s not a cheap toy, but if you’ve been planning to jump into 3D printing there’s no time like the present. I actually make a little money using MakeXYZ, a market for 3D printed objects. By printing things for other people you can actually pay for the ‘bot and the printing material in a few months.

Want to spend a little less? Take a look at the Afinia H series, a $1,599 printer with a smaller build plate than the Makerbot but, in some ways, superior resolution. I tested the rugged little Afinia and came away impressed. You can order the printers here.

One of my favorite products of 2013 was the Makerbot Digitizer. It’s a $1,400 3D scanner that can scan in almost any object. I reviewed it here calling it close to magic, which is the truth.

Don’t want to spend too much? 3D Systems has released the Sense scanner, a $399 model that requires you to move the scanner around an object in 3D space. They’re beginning to ship now and we’ll have a full review shortly, but that’s the gist of it.

Finally, you could probably use some filament. While Makerbot sells their own excellent filament, I’ve had good luck with Monoprice. You may have to mess around with the spool holder for your printer – Monoprice’s spools don’t fit the stock Makerbot spool holder – but you will save about $25 off of Makerbot’s prices.

Be sure to leave plenty of room under the tree for your printers – these things aren’t tiny – and enjoy entering the amazing 21st century.

Source: Techcrunch.com

In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on the Digitizer, here’s how the thing works: you place an object on its central turntable and fire up the device, at which point a pair of lasers (for greater accuracy, naturally) will scan the object’s surface geometry and turn that cloud of data points into a 3D model. MakerBot says the whole process takes about 12 minutes, after which you’re able to push the file to a 3D printer of your choosing and have a grand ol’ time.

There are, of course, some limitations to be aware of. The turntable can only support objects that are 3kg (or about 6.5lbs) or lighter, and you should ideally use the thing a very well-lit room. And while the Digitizer promises to be fast and easy, at $1,400 it’s not exactly impulse buy material.

When we visited MakerBot’s new 50,000 square foot factory in Brooklyn, CEO Bre Pettis referred to the Digitizer as a "game changer" for the 3D printing movement and it’s not hard to see why. For the past two years now, MakerBot’s efforts have largely been about making the process of 3D printing as accessible as possible. With a little bit of tinkering (and some patience for the occasional screw-up), 3D printing novices can get a feel for turning the contents of pre-produced files into actual physical objects.

It’s the other half of that equation that’s so tricky – if you wanted things to print you either had to trawl Thingiverse in hopes that someone had already modeled the thing, or figure out a way to model it on your own. To put it mildly, that’s a fair bit of work. With the advent of scanners like the Digitizer though, the barrier to creating those 3D blueprints and disseminating them to the world is almost nil… as long as you can afford it.

Of course, MakerBot isn’t the only company making it easier to turn physical objects into printable data – hackers and startups have harnessed Microsoft’s venerable Kinect to do just that, there’s a sea of crowdfunded hardware projects that aim to put their own spin on the experience. Still, MakerBot is easily one of the best known proponents of the 3D printing movement, and a device like Digitizer may just be what the movement needs to make 3D printing a fixture of the mainstream.

Source: Techcrunch.com