The MakerBot Replicator is here!

Bob March 10, 2012 at 8:47am

I heard early cupcake are pain in the butt to maintain. Is this getting better with Replicator & MK7 ?

I want something that don't need a lot of maintain.

Brian Ho February 19, 2012 at 11:53pm

Just placed order early this month. OMG need 8 weeks to wait. But this is fully assembled.

Now learning the 123D and 123 Catch. These software already aligned with Makerbot machine.

Ellison Chan January 12, 2012 at 4:04pm

Robert, are you married to Jim Flaherty? (Just kidding, I think you're talking about your real wife.)

Chris, interesting. It's still in pre-order status. It looks very simply designed, but I wonder how much of that is just because of the plastic housing. It's like the engines in German cars. They put a cover on top of the engine, and you get the impression that it's neat and trouble free, but we know better. And it eliminates the tweakablility factor. But, they seem to have a business model supporting "cloud printing", so you can get prints without actually buying a printer first. I wonder how their printing service and shipping costs, compared to Shapeways. I might try them out with my Firefly Mark One.

Rob_Lefebvre January 12, 2012 at 2:26pm

$1299 for a professional 3D printer? WOW! I can't wait until they get down to $400. Then I could probably get this past my Minister of Finance. :)

3D Robotics

Chris Anderson January 12, 2012 at 2:15pm

Ellison: Totally agree. We have a Stratasys at 3D Robotics and it's night and day compared to my MakerBots.

Did you see that 3D Systems has announced a more consumer-friendly ABS extrunsion printer called The Cube? At $1,299 it's attractively priced.

Ellison Chan January 12, 2012 at 2:06pm

From what I'm gathering, the extrusion based printers are still 1 or 2 generations away from home 3D printing really becomes useful. It's analogous to home desktop printing, when we were using dot matrix printers. Nevertheless, it is the ultimate in geek status symbol.

On the other hand, my experience with SLA printers, using the Shapeways service has me very impressed. It really is straight from concept to reality, no marketing hype. I'm eagerly anticipating the days when such printers enter the realm of home 3D printing, cost effectively.

Armando January 12, 2012 at 10:08am

3D printing with my cupcake cnc mk3-mk5(my thing: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4576) has been great, but only when it works. Using it to prototype concepts, has been a gift from Heaven, but I do feel Chris pain in regards to the hard core troubleshooting that needs to be done to have it run well. Even using the printer, there are a lot of different principles that you need to be familiar with, from designing software to engineering. As for me, it has been a very educational, but with a lot of frustration, pain, sweat, and also tears, a great asset.

If your not willing to fork out a lot of money for this technology, don't get in the wagon.

S.G. Sutter January 12, 2012 at 8:19am

A group of us at the office are looking at getting either a MB-Replicator or Ultimaker for onsite prototype fabrication.

Can Netfabb be used on the Replicator and achieve the same results as people report with the Ultimaker?

S. Garnett January 11, 2012 at 4:13am

Interesting stuff...

"netfabb Studio Basic is available to anybody, it is free just like in free beer, and runs
on Windows, Linux or Mac."

http://www.netfabb.com/basic.php

Taylor Cox January 10, 2012 at 11:51am

If anyone is interested I have successfully assembled and fined tuned 3 Makerbot ToM's and have sold them on ebay. I currently have a listing ending in a couple days if anyone is in need of a fully assembled Thing-o-matic with Mk7 and the newest hardware. I have cut the assembly and fine tuning time down to about 12 hours :). And here is the link to the listing

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170759671247...

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The MakerBot Replicator is here!

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