3D Printers

​With a few notable exceptions, the majority of objects removed from a 3D printer bed are fashioned with plastic. But plastic has a nasty habit of ruining our environment at the end of its useful life. Beer Holthuis has built a 3D printer that extrudes paper pulp to build three-dimensional objects.​

Desktop Metal might have set the ball rolling, but it seems HP is getting very serious about 3D metal printing at industrial volumes and automotive-grade production quality. HP Metal Jet is 50 times faster and significantly cheaper than existing methods, and pilot programs are already underway.

Harvard engineers have demonstrated a new 3D printing technique called “rotational 3D printing,” which lets users arrange the fibers in the ink in different orientations at different parts of the printed object, boosting its strength, stiffness and resistance to damage.

The Loop 3D printer from Turkey's Teknodizayn Ltd is being pitched as the only industrial grade 3D printer capable of producing batch after batch after batch without needing an operator.​

Most desktop 3D printers take well over an hour to generate a small object but a new design from engineers at MIT could completely change the 3D printing game, performing ten times faster than current commercial devices and printing complete objects in just minutes.

Mooz is aiming to fill in the gap between cheap, flimsy home 3D printers and expensive industrial gear with a modular all-in-one design offering interchangeable heads providing the ability to easily switch between multicolor 3D printing, CNC carving and laser engraving modules.​

Desktop Metal - remember the name. This Massachussetts company is preparing to turn manufacturing on its head, with a 3D metal printing system that's so much faster, safer and cheaper than existing systems that it's going to compete with traditional mass manufacturing processes.

​Last week, the BlackBelt launched on Kickstarter, a 3D printer that catered for continuous printing thanks to a conveyor belt instead of the usual print bed. Opencreators has also kicked off a crowdfunding campaign for a system that feeds in new build plates for each object from a stack.​

At the heart of many of today's 3D printers is a stationary print bed, meaning if you want to print a really, really long object like hollow tubing, it would likely take several print runs and some glue. The BlackBelt replaces the print bed with a conveyor belt, which allows for continuous printing.

This MIT robot can already 3D-print a concrete dome structure in 14 hours. But the development team has plans to have it roaming the land on its own, selecting and clearing building sites, designing homes, gathering building materials and completing construction without any human intervention.

​There are now a good many desktop 3D printers vying for dominance in the home office, making it difficult for newcomers to stand out from the crowd. 3DRap is looking to make its mark with a 3D-printed 3D printer that makes use of open source software and will retail for just over $250.

German startup Next Dynamics has unveiled the NexD1, a multi-color, multi-material 3D printer for the home that can use a conductive resin to create custom electronic circuit boards.