3D Printer for Home, Education and Rapid Prototyping

Three Things We Can’t Do… Yet.

by Aaron H. Pratt

The proliferation of printers in the 3D space has been remarkable. Among the most exciting things in the news in the past few weeks have been a 3D pen for manually drawing with plastic at a sub-$100 price point(1), and of course President Obama’s acknowledgement of the industry in his State of the Union Address(2). President Obama correctly acknowledged the laboratory where “new workers are mastering 3D Printing” as the appropriate domain of the 3D Printer today. He also keyed in on the technology as having the “potential to revolutionize the way we make everything”, which is simultaneously [Read more…]

Testimonial: Ellen Weaver: “Overall, A Lot Of Fun”

This was a Christmas present for my husband, but it has been a lot of fun for both of us. The quality of the prints is very good, definitely good enough for small things and sturdy enough to give most things to our toddler. I’m glad we waiting a couple years for the technology to mature, but this printer is pretty user friendly. The setup for the printer once we received it was pretty simple. The only things that needed tweaking from shipping were the platform leveling, and entering the values from the included calibration print file after we printed it. So far most of what we’ve done is print other peoples’ designs from Thingiverse, but we also make some cool stuff in SketchUp. You need a free plugin to export the files from sketchup to the afinia software, and I had to check the “unsolid model” in print preference so it didn’t do weird things with overlaps, but overall it wasn’t too hard. If I could add one feature, it would be a bigger build platform, but the flip side is that it’s a pretty small thing to fit on your desk, which is nice. Dualstrusion (to print in two colors a once) and faster production would be nice, but not a must have. The lack of an integrated display is no biggie for us, since we just leave it cabled to the computer and get the status from the software.
Reviewed by: Ellen Weaver from Denver, CO. on 1/10/2013

The Promise of 3D Printers

by Aaron H. Pratt, VP Marketing – Microboards Technology/Afinia

Almost exactly one year ago, we made the decision to enter the fray of 3D printing. What we saw then, and what we see now, was a disruptive technology, positioned to change business, that was beginning to make its way into the desktop market. Technologically speaking, we knew we were a late entrant. 3D printing, sometimes called Additive manufacturing, had been around for 30 years in one form or another. But marketwise, we saw a window of opportunity. Suddenly, garage tinkerers and back-room hobbyists were beginning to produce a product that met the economic requirements and piqued the interest of a much broader market than before. Given our expertise in commercializing new technology products in the B2B space, we decided to help the industry take a step past the tinker toy stage and offer a finished, supported device to users who were ready to try 3D printing but would need something that worked out of the box. And Afinia was born. [Read more…]

A Newbie’s Impression of 3D Printing

I’m fairly new to 3D Printing and got involved via our work with the folks at Afinia. We brought a printer over to the office, set it up and started using it within 45 minutes. Initially, we made models from Thingiverse that we used in videos and photoshoots. I have to admit, I moved the printer into the warehouse so that I wouldn’t gawk at it while it was working. [Read more…]