Embedded computer board manufacturer Arduino announced a partnership with Sharebot to produce the Materia 101, a personal 3D printer.
The Materia 101 is a plastic filament-based personal 3D printer with typical specifications:
- Build volume of 140 x 100 x 100mm “Theoretical” layer resolution: 0.0025 mm
- Filament diameter: 1.75mm Plastics: PLA (officially tested); Cristal Flex, PLA Thermosense, Thermoplastic Polyuretane (TPU), PET, PLA Sand, PLA Flex LCD display
And of course, the brains of the Materia 101 are an Arduino Mega 2560.
We’re a little suspicious about the 0.0025mm layer resolution, as that’s likely not possible in actual reality. But they say the machine is a “precision 3D printer”, so we wouldn’t be surprised if the rez was substantially better than the typical 0.100mm found on most devices.
The project is entirely open sourced, with files available on GitHub for anyone to use.
The machine will be available only on the Arduino online store and will be priced very affordably: €600 / USD$800 for a kit and €700 / USD$1000 for an assembled version. This is a good price for a solid machine.
We suspect the machine will be popular among the open source crowd, which also happens to be Arduino’s normal market. It could be a big seller and lead to additional collaborations.
Via Arduino
