14 DAY TRIAL // 3D printers have come a really long way in a very short time, dropping from tens of thousands of dollars to prices of under two thousand. The Replicator Mini 3D printer from MakerBot is among the best examples of this.
The product has finally gone on sale, bearing a price of $1,375 / €1,375. Well, technically, the conversion is of €1,005 or so, but exchange rates seldom reflect reality.
The Replicator Mini 3D printer could have probably reached the market ages ago. After all, it was originally introduced all the way back at CES 2014, in January.
Still, MakerBot took its time with it, possibly because the first few batches of them were reserved for large orders from corporate customers.
We'll just sit back and hope that the four (really five) months of waiting were time well spent for both the company and prospective buyers.
The MakerBot Replicator Mini is, as the name implies, a smaller version of the Replicator. It can still build things as large as 100 x 100 x 125 mm though (3.9 x 3.9 x 4.9 inches).
The technology used is fused deposition modeling, or FDM for short, meaning that plastic filament passes through and is superheated by an extruder that moves left and right, and up and down, according to a 3D model (STL, OBJ, Thing, MakerBot).
The filament is 1.75 mm thick, and the layer resolution is of 200 microns. Not really the 100 or 50 microns we've been seeing lately, but it's understandable.
The Replicator Mini is half a year old after all, and the new ones with 100 micron and 50 micron resolution will probably take just as long to reach the market.
Moving on, the camera resolution is of 320 x 240 pixels. Why is it even there, you might ask? In order to allow the printer to stream a live feed of the print process to your phone. It lets you check in to see how things are going.
A significantly larger printer, called Z18, will start shipping over the next few weeks as well, but sales probably won't be as good as those of the Replicator Mini. This, after all, is not just cheap, but small enough to fit on a user's desktop or side table.
“As soon as we announced the MakerBot Replicator Mini, we received calls and orders from customers who couldn’t wait to purchase this easy and affordable 3D printer. We see the MakerBot Replicator Mini as a turning point in the 3D printing industry,” says Makerbot’s CEO, Bre Pettis.
He goes on to mention that everyone, even children, should be exposed to 3D printing as soon as possible, in order to “change the way they think about the world and help prepare them for the jobs of the future.”