3-D Printer Makes... Candies!

—Daddy, I want a candy!
—Go print it yourself, sweety!
That kind of dialog you might expect to take place soon.

You must remember crazy inventors from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. They develop the idea of making fancy-looking food with modern printing technologies.

Their new invention, CandyFab 4000, is evolution of a 3-D printer with a hot-air gun mounted as a printerhead. CandyFab 4000 was hand-made and only cost $500 in parts plus labor. Overall cost of 3-D printer production is somewhat $1000, way cheaper than $5000 for DesktopFactory three-dimensional printer.

It uses same stack-of-layers technology to create three-dimensional objects. This time, they chose granulated sugar instead of toner to create candies of fancy shapes: a coil, a wooden screw and a polygonal.

Amazing is the cost of the “printouts”. For example, the wooden screw is 20 inches long and weighs about 2.5 pounds, however the total cost of used sugar is $0.93!

Three Dimensions for Your Home

If you ever dreamt of a device that would produce real objects, then your dream is coming true. Three-dimension printers have always been something large, expensive and available only to chosen ones. Until now.

Desktop Factory made 3-D printer smaller, cheaper and more affordable. The company will start selling its first printer for $4,995 this year, and price is expected to fall to $1,000 in next four years. So in the nearest future 3-D printer would be available to home users.

How does the printer actually work, you may ask. The plastic powder, an analogue of toner in regular printers, is dropped on and sticks to a heated roller, where it is fused with a light beam to make an image. Then image is rolled onto metal plate to form a layer. The plate moves down as more layers are stacked to make an object. When the object is created, the plate moves up to squeeze the layers under heat and fuse them. (Pictures taken from www.nytimes.com)

The printing method is yet to be improved, because the model makes objects with rather jagged edges and rather sandy finish that many do not find attractive, NY Times story tells. But there is demand that does not require high quality and cannot afford large printers.

The picture above shows what kind of object the new 3-D printer can create. They say more 3-D objects blueprints will be available later on the Internet for people to download and create.

New 3D-printer Produces More Durable and Detailed Models

The other day, Dimension 3D Printing Group, a division of Stratasys, introduced a new device for fast 3D-prototypes production - Dimension Elite 3D Printer. “Volumetric printer” Dimension Elite is an addition to existing range of table plants by Dimension 3D Printing Group, which include Dimension 1200 (two models) and Dimension 768 (two models also). Thus, the Dimension family has total of 5 models.


Dimension Elite 3D Printer enables engineers and designers to get models of enhanced detailing and higher quality surface processing, more durable and functional than ever before. The maximum dimensions of processing model are around 20x20x30 cm. The construction material is ABSplus, an advanced modification of ABS. ABSplus allows creating models that are 40% more resistant to mechanical action. The new product is priced at $32,900.