$249 3D Printer – MOD-t Review Specifications

It is the time for dreams of owning a 3D printer to come true. New Matter has come up with a home desktop 3D printer, selling at a modest price of 250 bucks. The MOD-t 3D printer has been realized through a successful funding campaign through Indiegogo. The beauty of this printer is the fact that performance does not suffer with its low price – here is a quick rundown of the printer’s specs.

¹Planned future capabilities are enclosed within brackets. These capabilities are not planned for the initial release.

The capabilities are highly comparable with many other desktop 3D printers on the market today.

New Matter’s design has significantly reduced cost by reducing the needed components in the build. The main difference is the way it traverses the x, y, and z axes. Most printers move the extruder through all 3 axes, or through x and y then have the build platform move through the z-axis. In the case of the MOD-t printer, the build platform or bed is moved through the x-y plane and the extruder moves along the z-axis.

The bed is moved by means of a rack and pinion mechanism, wherein the pinions are positioned exactly along the x and y axes, and the racks are found on the underside of the bed platform. The bed is removable and is not fastened to the printer in any other way than the racks’ contact points; but the designers have expressed their confidence that the bed is heavy enough to achieve stability throughout fast movements.

Additionally, they are utilizing servo motors in the design over stepper motors. Servos are a preference in these types of applications (robotics) for their capability of precise and accurate positioning, but require a great amount of feedback and monitoring, leading it to be a more costly option than stepper motors.

However, New Matter has a handle on this cost factor by making a (risky) move of generating these printers on a mass production scale – they are talking about hundreds of thousands of units – thereby acquiring a wholesale cost on materials and production. So they get the accuracy but do not suffer from the cost of using servo motors.

New Matter has teamed up with Frog Ventures to address the overall packaging of the unit and to ensure that the machine is user-friendly. The software will be assistive to make importing, customizing, and printing of model files easy and simple.

They plan to open up this library/online store of designs from which users can choose the item they want and have the printer produce it. In order to attract participation from designers, the model files will be non-downloadable and printed directly from the library software to protect their designs from misuse. If the user wants to print his own design, though, the printer recognizes standard model files (.stl).

Preselling to the first backers of this project went on for $149, and $199. The printers are now selling for $249, and will be available for shipping by 2015.