14 DAY TRIAL // Additive manufacturing has been used in, well, manufacturing for about three decades now, but consumer applications finally took off this year, although this leap had been brewing for three or so. The country of South Africa is now making its contribution.
Not to say that the nation was completely lacking in additive manufacturing capabilities before, but it's true that only now has it invented a consumer-oriented 3D printer.
Called Netram Nano, the product bears the name of its creator, a company by the name of Netram Technologies, based in Cape Town.
The Netram Nano 3D printer
As you might have guessed by now, the newcomer uses FDM printing technology, which is an abbreviation for fused deposition modeling.
Essentially, a metal extruder superheats plastic filament and releases it through a thin nozzle, building objects drop by drop and streak by streak.
The build volume is a decent 200 x 200 x 200 mm / 7.87 x 7.87 x 7.87 inches, while the filament diameter is of 1.75 mm and the layer height of as little as 100 microns (resolution in other words). The nozzle diameter is of 0.4 mm.
The filament fed into this printer can be made of PLA, ABS, nylon and flexible plastic / plastic derivatives, making the Netram Nano a bit more versatile than other printers in the world. Then again, it's not the cheapest printer either, so it evens out, but more on that later.
The 3D printer can receive data via USB (universal serial bus technology), which means that it possesses some degree of independence from PCs. There's even a small screen near the bottom, on the front, for control.
On that note, there's an SD card reader as well, with the similar purpose of letting you print models from removable storage media.
Finally, the Netram Nano 3D printer has a heated print bed, which should hold the object being printed stuck in place throughout the process, instead of you needing to apply adhesive to the build plate or anything else like that. It should also prevent object warping.
Availability and pricing
The Netram Nano 3D printer has a price of R11,999.95 in South Africa, or $1100 in the rest of the world (€869). The Netram website is the only place where you can place orders, and it might take up to three weeks for the product to be delivered, since each printer is made on command as far as we can tell. That, and shipping can take a long time, especially abroad.
