The February 2008 newsletter from Desktop Factory brings news of delays in the full launch of their printer. These appear to be mainly caused by teething problems brought to light by a rigorous beta testing regime. However one point they make is rather interesting:

We have found something that was somewhat counter-intuitive, at least to us. Our most recent data suggests that a low-priced 3D printer will need to exhibit a greater level of reliability than the current, more expensive offerings. Hopefully at least some of you are thinking - What? Why is that? Well, the number one reason given is that many of our users may be new to 3D printing and will not necessarily have the skills or a dedicated operator to insure the system performs at the highest possible level. We have also been told that the reliability expectation may be analogous to desktop publishing, where the 2D printer actually was more reliable than the costly copier that it began to replace.

As result it will be the 3rd quarter of 2008 before they are likely to ship.

Torben

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under Fab@School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.