By M. David Stone December 15, 2011 Comments Tweet Contents A 2D Tour of a 3D Printer Factory 5-8 9-12 13-16 \ABS\Auto Blog Samurai\data\All In One Printer\PC Mag Ink Jets\328289-a-2d-tour-of-a-3d-printer-factory.jpg)
It's only coincidence, but even as simulating 3D stereoscopically has gotten more and more popular in movies, TVs, and home theater projectors, a completely different type of 3D?the kind that deals with real-world, 3D objects?has also become a hot new area for printers. And because it's so new, when I started talking to Buildatron Systems about reviewing one of its 3D printers (stay tuned for that story), I also asked if I could tour its ... ummm ... manufacturing facilities.
That's a decidedly grandiose description for the few-hundred square foot office space where Buildatron puts its printers together. But the space is probably no smaller than the garage that the two Steves?Wozniack and Jobs?started with.
The comparison to Apple's?and, more broadly, the personal computer's?early days is hard to avoid. In fact, the parallels are striking. Like mainframe and mini computers in the mid 1970s, expensive 3D printers are well established today for lots of applications, from architectural modeling to printing dental crowns while you wait. And just as computers at prices individuals could afford were a brand new development in 1975, so too are affordable 3D printers today.
More than that, what you might reasonably call the personal 3D printer industry is at about the same level of development now as personal computers were in roughly 1975 or 1976. Back then, the 8080-based Altair 8800 and the 6502-based Apple I were generating lots of interest and excitement among hobbyists, but they weren't quite ready for the mainstream.
You can make the same statement about 3D printers today, which is why one of the explicit goals of Buildatron's three founders and directors?James Wolff, Dan Liotti, and Zach Hines?is to make the 3D printer (preferably Buildatron's of course), as common a household fixture as the computer. The one important piece that's missing is a software application that will do for 3D printing what VisiCalc did for the Apple II, namely: Make the printers immediately useful to mainstream users. (That's probably not too far away, but it's a subject for a different discussion.)
The current state of the industry shows in our photos if you know what to look for. A long time ago I wrote a piece that was, among other things, trying to get across what a real research lab is like. I sent a photographer to get some pictures of one, but he came back with pristine workbenches from what turned out to be a high school chem lab.
When I asked what happened, he told me that the research lab was so cluttered that he couldn't take photos he was happy with. I told him that the clutter was the point and sent him back to try again. Buildatron's work areas show the same kind of organized chaos that I expect to see in a working research lab.
Not so incidentally, Buildatron is part of the RepRap community. RepRap is shorthand for replicating rapid prototyper. The RepRap project's goal is to encourage the widespread distribution of 3D printers by developing open designs that can actually print most of the parts you need to build another printer. Open design for physical objects is the equivalent of open source for software, with designs available under the free GNU General Public License.
The Buildatron printers are based on the Crusa Mendel RepRap design. Buy one printer and you can print more. Buildatron will be happy to sell you just the parts that the machine can't print, as well as the rolls of plastic filament you need both for the parts it can print and for anything else you're interested in printing.
Buildatron came out with its first printer in September 2011. When I contacted one of the founders and began discussing coming by for a tour, he wanted to wait until the second model, the Buildatron 2, was ready. By December 2011, it was, at $1,599 in kit form or $2,500 prebuilt. When I got the word, I immediately made arrangements to swing by, and showed up with a backup photographer (aka, our analyst Tony Hoffman), as well as my own camera in hand.
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Buildatron is housed in the Greenpoint Lofts building in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, which offers a mix of residential areas and light industry. Greenpoint Lofts is basically an incubator operation, with lots of startups in an assortment of industries. The building is filled with recording studios, light manufacturing, film industry related companies, and Buildatron Systems, which takes up one office on the 3rd floor.
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Greenpoint is just over and a touch north of the Williamsburg Bridge from Manhattan?or the city, as New Yorker's tend to call it. We showed up on a day that was cloudy and occasionally raining. However, we've been assured that we're facing the city in this view, and if it had been a clear day, we would have had a great looking shot of the lower Manhattan skyline from outside Buildatron's door, three floors above the courtyard shown here.
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Easy to miss, because it's just to your left as you come in through the doorway, this impressive looking piece of machinery is a laser cutter. Buildatron says it was used mainly with the Buildatron 1, for cutting the case from acrylic. The new model's case is metal, so there's less for the cutter to do. However, Buildatron still produces a few components on the cutter, so it still gets some use.
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On the right as you walk in is this imposing collection of tools plus various odds and ends. Don't let that scare you away from a DIY kit, however. Buildatron collected these tools over time, and the company says that you need only a hex driver, and "a couple of wrenches" to build a printer from the kit.
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