Dremel Releases a Mass-Market 3D Printer

http://makezine.com/2014/09/17/dremel-3d-printer-idea-builder/

by zaaaaz • 12 years ago

146 104 12 years ago

makezine.com

choult• 12 years ago

Great to see backing from more established manufacturers for home 3D printing.

However, am I the only person who thinks the first photo looks like they're microwaving a mouse?

brianmtully• 12 years ago

a frog

CapitalistCartr• 12 years ago

They're microwaving a frog. Who eats mice, anyway? Ewww. Now frogs, there's some good eatin'.

tothepixel• 12 years ago

The Dremel site is unfortunately lacking the pricing. They note that it's available for purchase on Amazon, but it isn't as far as I can tell.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

zaaaaz3• 12 years ago

$999 according to the article.

ntkachov• 12 years ago

Thats actually pretty reasonable provided the print quality warrants the price tag. I would buy it for that price if it could print things with enough structural support for every day use.

dmritard96• 12 years ago

1K, I think there are plenty of others out there with more intriguing designs. Whats interesting is the distribution channel though. The article mentions Home Depot...so does that mean it will be next to makerbot products?

vonmoltke• 12 years ago

In stores that actually have 3D printers, I suppose so.

zaaaaz3• 12 years ago

From what I've read, the Home Depot/Makerbot program is only in 12 of their stores.

seanp2k22• 12 years ago

Neat, but I still don't feel that I need one now, or that I'll need one in the next few years. I guess I haven't really seen what useful things can be made with 3D printers...almost everything from them I've seen IRL is either a small statue or jewelry.

gr3yh47• 12 years ago

the most obvious application is replacing parts - replacement battery covers, game/toy parts, buttons, small pieces of car trim, really anything smallish and plastic that gets lost or broken could be replaced with a 3d printer.

potential replacement for non plastic parts too depending on the application.

also customizing parts. Custom dice for games, etc etc.

smacktoward2• 12 years ago

Are any of those things really a problem in an age of cheap disposable crap, though?

Battery cover gets lost? Replace the whole thing.

Toy breaks? Replace the whole thing.

Button comes off your jacket? Replace the whole thing.

(I'm not saying this is an ideal world -- I personally would much rather live in a world where things are long-lived but cost more -- but it's the world we live in.)

delecti• 12 years ago

The limitation to that logic for me is being concerned about having models for the missing parts. I've got a remote missing a battery cover that I'd love to replace, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to design a model for it.

zaaaaz3• 12 years ago

This one is what started convincing me that there's a useful place for these machines: http://instagram.com/p/kpJz-5Ipcy

"Fruit basket had a couple missing feet so I whipped up some replacements in Tinkercad and printed them out."

cmsmith2• 12 years ago

This is invariably the top comment in any thread here about 3D printing. And yes, if you're not in the habit of making things (whether for fun or professionally) without a 3D printer, then you probably won't find much use for one. Most people never interact with unique objects, objects which aren't produced by the thousands or millions. And those types of mass produced objects can be made much more easily and well using traditional manufacturing.

I agree that 90% of the 3D printing going on is just for novelty items like jewelry or statues, which doesn't seem worth it to me. But if the novelty printers provide enough of a market to ensure the availability of printers for people who are using them for inventions or scientific instruments, then it's fine with me.

Things I've printed in the last few months:

* a bracket for installing a PID controller into my homemade sous vide cooker

* brackets for clamping a shaft and pulley into a specific configuration for a tension testing rig

* a tiny clamp for holding ceramic fibers in said test rig

* an adapter for mounting a custom optical filter to a camera

* a prototype of a new strain measuring device

bcohen5055• 12 years ago

I'm a mechanical engineer and I use 3D printing for countless things at work and occasionally in my own life but unless you are making things at home at least once a month it doesn't make sense to have your own and I think that is what the OP is saying. The idea of a "household" 3D printer doesn't appeal to him because like most consumers they don't want to make things they just want to buy them.

If you think of the 3D printer more like a tablesaw and less like a microwave the market shrinks but the use case becomes much more clear.

dfc• 12 years ago

How much force can you put on the brackets and or strain measuring device?

vidarh3• 12 years ago

A "killer app" would be one that'd be sufficiently good to do lego-style bricks of decent quality. It will require a leap in quality, though.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

With Dremel, they serve dual markets. Their equipment serves both art and general-purpose handyman tools.

lallysingh• 12 years ago

I felt that way until I realized that 3d printing could be the lego for the next generation of kids. Hell, start with legos, then print out the parts that you wish you had, and refine until you've got something that's actually "maker worthy."

Save the files, then start on your next project. Add a microcontroller! yay! I'm completely projecting on my kid, and that's my right as a father! Muahahaha!

georgemcbay2• 12 years ago

I use mine (Prusa i3 reprap design) mostly for camera stuff. I've made a few lens adapters from old manual focus bayonet mounts to my Sony A7, printed the physical housing to get a full-sized speedlite flash mounted to the Fuji Instax 210 instant camera, etc. Pretty ideal for cameras where you are often wanting to mate this thing to that thing with some sort of adapter that may or may not exist otherwise or might cost a ridiculous amount of money for what it is due to relatively low demand for the part.

seanp2k22• 12 years ago

That's awesome! Are those parts open-source anywhere? Also, curious as to how sturdy those are and what exactly they're made from. In my (quite limited) experience handling printed parts, they didn't really seem like the type of thing I'd trust to hold something expensive + fragile like a camera lens.

jameshart• 12 years ago

interesting that it's a 3d printer - would have thought a desktop CNC milling machine would be closer to their traditional high-RPM switchable-toolhead powertool business.

Crito• 12 years ago

If they offered a sub-$2k CNC machine, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Now that I think about it, I should probably see what I can actually find for sale...

reportingsjr3• 12 years ago

Check out the shapeoko 2. It is about $700-$800 for the full thing. You do have to assemble it which takes a day or two. Inventables donated one to the hackerspace I belong to. I've used it a few times and it is pretty nice for what it is.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

Dremel Releases a Mass-Market 3D Printer
and a $999 price point

No. A 3D printer that's over $500 won't be mass market. Even $500 is probably too high. Most people might buy one if it's only $300 (with good enough quality - which could happen years from now). My guess is it will be another decade before normal families consider a cheap 3D printer, and only then it's when 3D printers will be "mass-market".

pessimizer• 12 years ago

According to the internet ( http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=595+1986+dollars ), my mother paid $1289 for our ImageWriter II in 1986.

Mass market doesn't have to mean 100 million. 1 million is plenty.

riskable2• 12 years ago

Nonsense. All it takes is for the utility of the thing to match or best its price. For example, if the average, every day person is told that they could use a 3D printer to save thousands on car parts, vacuum cleaner parts, and similar it won't take long before everyone has one in their house (or is regularly pestering their neighbor to use theirs, haha). Even at $1000.

jeffchuber2• 12 years ago

Gates: We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next 2 years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10.

frederickf• 12 years ago

And it's not just the cost. Printing things has to be as easy as printing text which can still be annoying. Maybe someday there will be a sequel to Office Space in which they destroy a 3d-printer with the futuristic equivalent of baseball bats.

Ccecil6• 12 years ago

https://flic.kr/p/dUExnL

robbrown4512• 12 years ago

I got my first Dremel tool in 1982 and have always had one since. I love those things more than I can express.

This is awesome. It may not really have anything to do with their "moto-tool", but it just warms my heart to see their name on it.

kevin_thibedeau• 12 years ago

I replaced mine with a $20 Chinese knockoff when their crappy speed controller burned out. Good riddance. Don't know why they can't figure out how to design brushes that don't jam in the housing either.

robbrown4512• 12 years ago

The newer models are unfortunately crappier. When I got my first one (when I was in high school) it was the only option, and high enough quality.

The one I have now is about 15 years old and has gotten a ton of use and abuse.

coldcode• 12 years ago

What limitations on materials does this have? They mention a lack of heating but I don't know enough about 3d printers to know what that means it doesn't support.

IshKebab• 12 years ago

It means it doesn't support ABS.

ja27• 12 years ago

ABS is a sturdier plastic that's more resistant to heat, light, water, etc. The Dremel can only do PLA. The major difference when printing is that ABS shrinks when it cools so you need to keep the base of the print hot to keep it from popping off of the print bed. So ABS is a little more work but is a sturdier plastic.

gmu32• 12 years ago

I've played around with both, and the extruder printers are generally vastly inferior to the printers that use lasers.

reportingsjr3• 12 years ago

Laser based 3d printers (largely Selective laser sintering and stereolithography) also tend to be far, far more expensive than FDM (extruder based) machines. There are some pretty good FDMs that are approaching the point where you can't see or feel the individual layers in the print.

veemjeem2• 12 years ago

Can one even buy a consumer SLS printer? I was under the impression that the cheapest SLS printer is still around 50k.

jglauche• 12 years ago

I'm under the impression that a LOT of companies are currently thinking that they miss their market right now if they don't bring out a 3d printer. Actually, the market is not that big and over-saturated with printers right now. The vendors (this goes especially to the big ones) are missing one critical point: They haven't made it easy enough for Joe User to create printable 3d designs. The "mass" will not buy a product like that if they don't understand why they need it for and also not if they don't have access to easy and powerful tools to make actually good use of it.

jeffchuber2• 12 years ago

easy and functional designs. PLA toys are just a novelty.

Ccecil6• 12 years ago

Over-saturated is an understatement..it is getting pretty bad.

http://www.3ders.org/pricecompare/3dprinters/

I am sure that is not nearly all of them :)

The design is always an issue when printing too. Customers rarely design their models to be printed because they don't fully understand the process. If you design correctly you can get away with very little support material and still get very detailed models..if not then you end up with either a poorly printed object or significant detail loss on the surfaces from support material removal.

Maybe some plugins for popular CAD programs might be helpful...at least some sort of "ray" plugin that would show where your trouble overhangs/support material generation will be located. At least for training purposes.

razster• 12 years ago

More often than not it is a print quality issue with a lot of them. At least what I've run into.

justsee• 12 years ago

I'm not sure a few pages of 3d printers covering a price range from $140-$846 000 is really any evidence of over-saturation.

How do we determine this? An equivalent list of 2d printers would be significantly longer.

gizmo686• 12 years ago

My sense is that alot of companies are trying to get ahead of the curve on 3d printers. The major advance that will make 3d printers mass market items is probably going to be in the moddeling software, and the "model store" ecosystem. This makes the printers themselves largely commodities from the start, so if a company already has a couple of prototypes done to the point where they have a solid printer, they are ready to ride the wave of mass 3d printing.

Of course, this is assuming that someone solves the hardware problem, otherwise it is likely just a failed investment; but that just makes it a risky investment.

HappyTheHacker• 12 years ago

Yeah, we have the past two MakerBots, which work decently, and their 3D scanner which is unusable.

jonhohle2• 12 years ago

    > They haven't made it easy enough for Joe User to create
    > printable 3d designs.

As the top comment points out - not only the modeling is difficult, but printing is difficult to. What comes out of a 3D printer is not equivalent to what comes out of a blister pack.

    > Re: market saturation

At the low end, everyone seems to be providing FDMs. 10 years ago, I would have put my money on Z-Corp style parts at the low end (though they are not really practical for use at home without some significant post processing).

SLS would also give you higher resolution with the option of materials, little waste, and a nearly ready-to-go part out of the machine. Anyone know if there are attempts to bring that to homes?

spiritplumber• 12 years ago

I wonder if they'd be interested in my laser cutter attachment. http://robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/index.php?n=Main.LCheap...

Ccecil6• 12 years ago

Just another clone of a printer that cloned their ideas from reprap. Nothing to see here except the line where they state they have locked down your options in software...great idea...eliminate user controls...that should make it more user friendly.

The only reason to eliminate those features is so that you are locked into using their consumables (or maybe to avoid some patent issue in the case of the variable infill).

It is sad that these are the types of printers that get attention. Nothing special about the design, build area or pretty much anything but it has a Dremel logo so of course it will sell.

Just another company trying to jump onto the already crowded 3d printing wave. I am sure there are more to come.

Ccecil6• 12 years ago

Apparently my opinion is not a popular one :) That is fine. I have been a very active member of the reprap community for 3.5 years and have watched printers come at a rate of about 1-2 per week for the last 2 years...every one has new hype but they are all the same thing. Same linear motion, same lack of heated bed, same everything. Even the stated resolution tends to be the same...always based on theoretical stepper placement and rarely takes actual xy resolution due to nozzle size into account.

I think it is great people want to bring printing to the masses but locking the user out of temperature, infill, and other settings is not a good way to do it. Sure you eliminate their choices thereby eliminating user error...but in my case I would only be able to print about 75% of the things I do without being able to control the variables currently available in the slicers/firmware. There are many times even mid print where I vary the temperature, extrusion steps/mm and accel.

I guess it must be too much to ask that there be some actual innovation...instead of just offering the same printer that many others are selling with locked down controls (and I am assuming closed source firmware).

Smoothieware is becoming more popular and that is ARM based and has been around for over 2 years. The fact this printer has an ARM based electronics platform is not as "new" as it may seem...but of course it is much better than the atmega stuff.

nickpinkston• 12 years ago

Seems like Dremel did the 3DPer first because it's all the hype, but with desktop CNCs like Shapeoko, OtherMill, NomadCNC, etc. coming out, and Dremel being ::the:: company of mini-router spindles, they'll probably come out with desktop CNC mill soon.

tmuir• 12 years ago

$2200 for the Othermill and $2500 for the Nomad for what amount to hobbyist machines seems way too high, especially for being unable to cut steel, and having such limited tool sizes. I'd also venture a guess that the speeds for cutting aluminum are pretty slow, and you're probably taking very thin passes.

For $3900, you can get a proper mill with a retrofit kit, controller and software:

Mill: http://www.grizzly.com/products/Drill-Mill-with-Stand/G0704

Retrofit Kit: http://www.grizzly.com/products/Mini-Mill-Retrofit-Kit-Compa...

This will cut steel, accepts tools up to 7/8", has a 1HP spindle motor, a much larger work volume, higher feedrates, etc.

I realize that there are plenty of applications that can be satisfied with wood and plastic, but making precise metal parts are really the killer app of CNC Mills.

benjamind2• 12 years ago

Having played around with 3d printers for the last couple of years I have to say that they are an indispensable tool for makers/hackers/inventors/artist types. However for mass market as many here have said we are just not there yet.

To get there we really need to have a few innovative large manufacturers start publishing replacement part CAD models for their products. Making that leap is obviously a big deal for a lot of manufacturers who make outstanding margin on their replacement parts, but that is the kind of thing we need in order for a printer to be useful to the truly mass market.

Additionally, and I think we're seeing this already, we need a lot more 3d printable products to come to market. For example, I just recently finished printing a Clug bike rack for a friend (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/834664305/clug-cycle-st...). This is a prime example of bringing 3d printing to the general public - they provide a high quality version you can buy, or a cheap 3d printable version which you can pay a lot less for just the 3d files. We worked out that with the model cost and the material cost you could print somewhere in the region of 30 replacements before it was more economical to buy the mass produced high quality version. Thus far the rack hasn't broke yet either!

soperj• 12 years ago

I just use a hook to do the same thing as a clug. It screws into the wall and you just hang your bike by the wheel.

benjamind2• 12 years ago

Totally fair point, the product itself is somewhat....over designed ;-)

proee• 12 years ago

I believe Dremel is just rebranding the "Flashforge Dreamer" which is a company out of china.

http://www.flashforge-usa.com/shop/3d-printers/flashforge-dr...

I purchase this model a few months ago and it's been alright - though the extruder seems to get jammed half way into my prints.

It's interesting to see the base price is below the OEM.

Already__Taken2• 12 years ago

Is it? I thought the huge deal of all these slick printers is to do the razor blade business model.

Nobody seems to want to make the printer with cheap highly compatible plastics and if they could limit the models you can print even better.

DerekL• 12 years ago

You don't say! From the article:

    The Idea Builder is based on the Flashforge Dreamer,…

RickS• 12 years ago

Presumably the OEM is actually a retail price, Dremel is paying 40-70% less, and then marking it back up to $999.

dominotw• 12 years ago

Have we moved beyond selling $4 trinkets on esty with these things?

vqc• 12 years ago

I was extremely high on buying a 3D printer, and then I read this post: http://chopmeister.blogspot.com/2014/08/sifting-through-feat...

I think I'm going to wait a while before buying.

jfoutz• 12 years ago

I bought a cupcake back when they were kits. It was fun to build. Soldering my own stepper drivers was kind of cool. They were a great step between nothing and full DIY. I feel like i could build one from scrounged parts now.

It's not a good printer. belts slip, hard to keep the heat consistent or even know what a good heat is for a given model. i can futz around with it for a couple of hours and then get good prints for a while, but any downtime and i forget all the special little tweaks to get a good print. I probably have around a 1 to 2 ratio of successful prints to failures.

Fundamentally, the thing that's holding back 3d is the design software. openscad is great for what it is, but it's not like amazing. Desktop publishing really take off till mom could print a banner on the old dot matrix. Something like Broderbund's Print shop pro.

Heck, a clip on my dishwasher broke. it was way easier to just order the part. I still feel a little guilty about not printing up a replacement, but it would be dozens of hours for a $10 part.

They are a fun toy, i'd recommend going reprap or something and just figuring out how to make one. Actually doing useful work with one (even a cheap commercial one) would require a lot of discipline and willingness to fiddle with things.

If you just want one to design your own parts, hit up shapeways or one of the alternatives. send them your dxf get a thing. it's cool.

Regardless, diy or outsource, I'll bet you a nickle the design software is what holds you back. Blender is awesome, but not easy. openSCAD is awesome but not easy. etc...

D_Alex• 12 years ago

it would be dozens of hours for a $10 part.

Yes, but then you upload the design to Thingiverse or similar, and it becomes 30 minutes (plus printing time) for the rest of the world.

And 30 mins may in itself be unjustifiable to save $10... but ordering the part online will probably take time too...

CamperBob2• 12 years ago

Seems like Dremel would be better positioned to offer a mass-market small CNC machine. They have no background or corporate strengths in the additive-manufacturing business.

braum2• 12 years ago

but there were no CNC prototypes in the makerspace they could license and slap their name on and put in a box... 3D printers though... overpriced and will be on clearance rack in 5-6 months where we can get them for a few hundred which will be a great deal.

hugs2• 12 years ago

ShapeOko is a low-cost open source hardware CNC machine. The license (CC BY-SA) is quite liberal and business friendly.

http://www.shapeoko.com/ https://github.com/shapeoko/Shapeoko_2

allegory• 12 years ago

That's already covered by Unimat for a long time:

http://www.thecooltool.com/en/products/unimat-metalline/unim...

There is a CNC pack which contains steppers, control systems and software:

http://www.thecooltool.com/en/products/unimat-metalline/unim...

I own the non-CNC unit and it's a fine piece of engineering!

JustinFreid• 12 years ago

To think of all that Dremel's destroyed, now, it can create.

bane• 12 years ago

The key now for any Mass-Market printer manufacturer is to "go apple". Support a proprietary format so you can only print those out on their printer, and have a "store" full of stuff you can download and print off. Populate the store with unbelievably professionally modeled thingamabobs to kick it off. Let people put up their own models, and even set price points to download the model, but don't charge for each copy.

yitchelle• 12 years ago

One serious question. How many have bought a 3D printer, played with it for a bit, and then it stayed gathering dust in the corner of the room?

huuu2• 12 years ago

I own a 3D printer. It's an Ultimaker (they are coming to the US [1]) and I'm using it for prototyping.

Some things that you almost never read about consumer 3D printers:

  * 3D printing is hard.
  * You cannot print 'everything'. Overhang is always an issue.
  * Most prints take hours (as in 'a full day') to print.
  * You cannot print fast and have a good quality print.
  * There are a ton of factors that influence the print quality.
  * Every type / color of filament needs it's own settings based on trial and error.
  * Great 3D print examples are mostly print on +$50.000 printers.

I think the Ultimaker and Makerbot are the only brands that deliver good reliable consumer printers. But I'm also keeping an eye on Formlabs.

[1] https://www.ultimaker.com/blogs/news/2014/09/16/ultimaker-la...

jonhohle2• 12 years ago

I usually come into these threads to say the same thing. From 2000-2003 I did IT support for a lab with SLA, FDM, SLS, LOM, and Z-Corp machines (and wrote some supporting software for many of them).

In addition to your list:

    * parts often need some type of post processing to
      be viable long term (it depends on the process,
      support removal, sanding/bead blasting, resin
      injection, curing, etc.) this can take many additional
      hours.
    * different machines have different tolerances

That said, I'm surprised overhang is an issue. This is a solved problem. Machines like FDM use a non-binding support material; support is intrinsic to SLS, Z-Corp, and LOM processes; SLA is the worst since the support material is the same as the building material. To the best of my memory, in these big commercial machines support creation was done as part of the slicing process (or some other solid model preparation) in software before the part was sent to the machine.

That said, this is the first home 3D printer that I've been excited about, and the price point is killer.

Also, if they haven't licensed tech from 3D Systems, how long before they are sued.

huuu2• 12 years ago

Well I think overhang is still an issue for single extruder FDM printers (like the Dremel one). The slicer can generate supports but in my experience this will cause some of these issues:

  * Print times will double or triple.
  * Sometimes its really hard to remove the support material.
  * You will need a lot more material.
  * Support structures can break while printing because they are thin.
  * The slicer doesn't create the right support.

So most of the time I end up designing support structures myself.

Corrado• 12 years ago

It would be cool if Home Depot had a 3D printer in their stores. That way you could upload your design and run by and pick it up 4 hours later.

bronson• 12 years ago

Kinko's also seems like an ideal place. They're 2-D printing your uploaded designs already.

Dremel Releases a Mass-Market 3D Printer

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