DesktopFactory Wins Netxplorateur Award

The French Netxplorateur Forum has selected DesktopFactory as the recipient of their Netxplorateur of the Year award. DesktopFactory is one of only 10 of the 100 initiatives to receive the award. Cathy Lewis, CEO of DesktopFactory, said:

"It is clear that Desktop Factory will forever change the way we think of 'printing' - from an explosion in creativity to enabling simple home repairs with the click of a mouse."

DesktopFactory's sub-$5000 3D printer may do just that.

Via Streetinsider.com

DesktopFactory LOSES Innovator of the Year Award

Our favorite yet-to-be-seen device, the low-cost DesktopFactory 125ci 3D printer has lost out to Tangible Express as the recipient of the first annual "Rapid" Innovator of year award, as determined by the Low Volume Manufacturers Association.

Who is Tangible Express? They are a 3D fabrication service, like many others. However, previous posts in Fabbaloo typically describe consumer-grade services. Tangible Express appears to be a service of industrial scale and quantity. According to TE's website:

Four-thousandths of an inch is about the thinness of a human hair. Yet from 1/4,000th of an inch layers of photocurable liquid resins zapped repeatedly by computer driven lasers emerge wondrous prototypes, tools and end-user parts that are revolutionizing global manufacturing.

Tangible Express is at the forefront of this remarkable transformation from time-consuming, expensive, inflexible manufacturing techniques to Manufacturing 2.0, the factories of the future now!

Tangible Express blends unparallelled technical and design know-how with its fleet of rapid fabricating equipment to provide engineers, prototypers, toolmakers, inventors and manufacturers rapid, cost-effective, flexible manufacturing capabilities.

Clients turn to Tangible Express whether they need a single prototype costing a couple hundred of dollars or 500 highly technical end-use parts for a crucial aerospace or military project.

In each instance, Tangible Express offers 20 different material platforms from which to build the specified project, and can go from concept to final product in a matter of days – not weeks or months.

A unique feature of TE is the ability for frequent clients to become fractional owners of the fab plant itself, thereby able to claim various tax advantages. Congratulations, Tangible Express!

Via PRWeb

ZCorp ZPrinter 450 Named Revolutionary

Entrepreneur.com has named ZCorp's ZPrinter 450 as one of their 15 "revolutionary inventions of 2007". Alongside the 450 were such notables as the iPhone, Amazon's Kindle, the XO Laptop and iRobot's Looj.

We've covered the Zprinter 450 before, and agree - it is an amazing device. Now, if only it were a little less expensive...

Via Entrepreneur.com

Objet Wins Gold Award

At the Euromold fair Objet Geometries won the Gold award for their new Connex 500 3D printer. We've covered this amazing device before, but if you didn't read our post, the 500 is notable for its ability to print using multiple materials simultaneously. This means that you can print objects with hard and soft parts, as well as different colors.

Via PRW.com