Ultimaker: high-speed, low-cost 3D printer

MAKE:'s Jon Kalish looks in some depth at Ultimaker, a MakerBot-style 3D printer that runs at higher resolutions and speeds than current MakerBot models. The creators of Ultimaker come from the Dutch Center-for-Bits-and-Atoms-affiliated Fab Lab, and has "Dutch design" touches that are said to be a delight. MakerBot co-founder Bre Pettis says, "They can move their machine around at a pretty amazing speed. There are some things they did that are pretty clever. This is what happens when you do something that’s successful. Other people figure it out, too, and start businesses. More 3D printers are good."

The three partners all live in different cities in the Netherlands (De Bruijn is in Tilburg, Elserman in Geldermalsen, and Wijnia in Haarlem). Ultimaker started shipping its open source 3D printer in April. The machine costs about US$1700, and with next day shipping, the price approaches $1900. According to De Bruijn and Elserman, more than 120 printers have been sold and close to 70 have been shipped so far. It takes between four and six weeks between order and delivery. Half of the new printers have been sold in the Netherlands, thanks to exposure on a national TV program. Customers include a disabled Dutch woman whose Ultimaker has printed gripper hands for robotic arms that she uses to grasp small candies, something her previous gripper could not do.
Like MakerBot, Ultimaker can print with either ABS or PLA plastic, though the company says printing with the plant-based PLA makes for a faster and more stable build. The Ultimaker is getting high grades for its design. Unlike the MakerBot, which has a moving build platform, the Ultimaker has a print head that moves. It is compact and weighs considerably less than MakerBot’s print head, and the Ultimaker’s motors are mounted on the printer’s frame, not on a moving part like MakerBot. This allows for bigger objects to be made (8.25″ cube for Ultimaker vs. 5″ cube for MakerBot) at higher speeds.

Ultimaker: There’s a New 3D Printer in Town

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MORE: 3d printer • maker • netherlands • video • youtube

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http://twitter.com/Rev_Elliott Elliott

looks incredible, until you realise he meant to print out a motorbike
nixiebunny

I’m glad to see people improve it. That’s the best part of open hardware.
http://thebeatdown.disqus.com Franklin

How do you buy the materials? Are they expensive? How much would the raw PLA cost to make, say, a girlfriend?
The Thompson Five

I’ll be curious to see the Makerbot reaction to this. Try and improve the current design or change course altogether and make a machine more like the one above?
- mutsbug
  
  i’ll bet they switch the motors to stationary at least. in hindsight it makes so much sense
Chuck Milner

Why hasn’t someone built a 3D printer which can print 3D printers? Then we could use it to print thousands of 3D printers for free!
- Cory Doctorow
  
  See the RepRap.
- http://www.facebook.com/plato.kasserman Plato Kasserman
  
  That’d be like using a finite improbability generator to generate an infinite improbability generator. Well, almost.
- mutsbug
  
  there is one like that, do a google search
lavardera

I’d like to be more impressed, but this feels like I’ve lived this already.

The printing action here reminds me of pen plotters from 30 years ago. The same jittering and skittering around mimicking the action of drawing the piece. They were the state of the art for large format technical printing, and they got their asses handed to them by cheap inkjet printers adapted to a wide carriage. The next step with these 3d printers will be better print heads that lay down a swath of material in one pass.
- Cory Doctorow
  
  That sounds like powder deposition instead of the wire deposition used by MakerBot and Ultimaker. Unfortunately, powder deposition is a patent quagmire, though many of the key patents expire in about 4 years. I expect many MakerBot-style projects will do interesting things when that happens.
  - lavardera
    
    I’m not suggesting what the deposition method is, or was, or will be, just that a wider printing pass, more than one “pixel”, will up the printing speed much more than any level of hyper activity on the part of a print head like this.
Bernhard Kubicek

If you build your own, patents do not apply. There was some build initiative here:
http://builders.reprap.org/search?q=selective+laser+sintering+
elizabethmolin

What is it?
- andygates
  
  Looks like one of the corner or slider pieces for another 3D printer! RepRap is made up of lots of corner blocks like these, slotted together on metal bar to make the open box and moving head form that they all more-or-less share.
  
  Neat trick, putting the movestuff in the box to keep the print head as light as possible. Chapeau!
Michael Senkow

I’d love to see one using the liquid laser sintering tech. But yeah, Ultimaker is way better than Makerbot, I have a makerbot and another guy in the arch program has the Ultimaker. Mine was from the batch of Makerbots that had faulty DC motors for the extruder and I don’t think I’ve yet to have a print that didn’t get messed up.
tsa

Why didn’t it print a cute fluffy bunny instead of a boring piece of machinery?
http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

WANT
muteboy

What kind of plastic is PLA or ABS? What kind of objects are currently made with them? Are they hard, brittle, soft, bendy?
- http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
  
  LEGO is made from ABS. It’s a really hard plastic. I don’t have any experience with PLA.
Benjamin Rockhold

ABS is what LEGO and many other plastic objects are moulded from. When extruded it has a slightly malleable surface, and it cools down from its 225ºC extruding point quickly. It smells a bit like a car after a long day in the sun when molten (a plastic smell that is mildly unpleasant).
PLA is usually made from corn starch, and is essentially a sugar. When extruded it is brittle, and takes longer than ABS to cool to a solid from its 200ºC extrusion temperature. It is also usually considered biodegradable. It smells like maple syrup when molten.
PLA is terrific for parts that will take compression but not torsion, and ABS is decent in both uses. I have constructed numerous 3D printers, and printed with ABS, PLA, PVA, and HDPE. I like PLA best, for myriad reasons.
bjacques

I was at an art opening that featured the Ultimaker. Pix here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjacques/sets/72157627141282122/