Low-cost 3D printer makes at-home production reality

Low-cost 3D printer makes at-home production reality

New Kickstarter project could well be first affordable at-home 3D printer brought to market

BY MELISSA SUE SORRELLS GALLEY

Staples may be planning to bring 3D printing to the consumer marketplace, but three men from San Diego want to bring it right into your home office, and they’ve created an overwhelmingly successful Kickstarter campaign to help them do it.

Called the RoBo 3D Printer , the device is not the first personal 3D printer out there, but it is one of the most inexpensive. Its creators believe that they’ll be able to sell the product for just over $500 — a veritable steal compared to home 3D printers with price tags in the thousands.

The RoBo 3D Printer is for the “average joe.”

“For the average joe, there’re not many opportunities to buy a 3D printer without breaking the bank,” says co-founder Braydon Moreno. “So we decided to build it ourselves for people like us and to keep it open source so there’s no barriers to how this machine can evolve.”

Additionally, Moreno and his partners say that RoBo 3D was designed to remove many of the entry-level barriers associated with in-home 3D printing. They promise that the printer will be easy to use and require very little design knowledge, making it the perfect starter printer for beginners, hobbyists, educators, and artists. It is plug-and-play with a USB connector and works with open-source 3D modeling software, like Google Sketchup.

Model of Yoda printed by the RoBo 3D.

For those interested in a more advanced printer, RoBo 3D stands up well to its more costly competitors. It has a 10 x 10 x 8-in. print area — large for an at-home printer, but still small enough to fit into the personal office. It prints at 100-micron layers in 3-mm-diameter PLA plastic filament, which results in strong, hard-wearing products.

With just under a month left in their campaign, RoBo 3D and its founders have already well surpassed their funding goal, with more than $121,000 pledged by nearly 300 backers. Once the campaign is completed, the trio plans to begin mass-manufacturing the printers — ordering some components and printing others in their RoBo 3D farm.

For more on 3D printing, read How 3D Printing is Building Our World and 5 Things to Know: 3D Printing .

For more information about RoBo 3D, visit the Kickstarter page . ■