A $1000 3-D printer from HP?

I scanned through an article in Popular Mechanics about replicators and saw a quick blurb about HP having made a proto-type 3-D printer for home use which they plan to sell for about $1000, anybody heard any further details about this?

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2009 10:21AM by Tornadoboy.

I found several references to such a printer on the web. It's apparently something back in the labs at HP and not yet ready to be mass-produced.

Plan on the filament costing you a fortune, if previous HP business models with their inkjet printers are any guide.

---

-------------------------------------------------------

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Yeah and no doubt the printer will reject filaments from any other manufacturer and half the filaments you do buy from HP will go bad before being used up.

Now that you've reminded me about all that and the financial carnage I've seen inkjets bring upon the public school system, maybe I'll just spend my $1000 to build a Reprap and have its first printed item be a middle finger which I'll send to HP.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2009 01:04PM by Tornadoboy.

I don't expect HP to change it's business model any time soon.

---

-------------------------------------------------------

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Does someone have a link to an article about this? I'm interested in what technology they are using.

It doesn't surprise me that a printer manufacturer would be interested in doing something like this since the techniques are similar.

I found a mention of it. Apparently it was a rumor SIX YEARS AGO:

[www.wired.com]

"The future has bewildering potential. In 10 years, you might be able to fax a toy car to a favorite niece or nephew. It could even be sooner than that. The New York Times reported rumblings that Hewlett-Packard is planning to sell a 3-D printer for $1,000."

They point to the original article:
[www.nytimes.com]

"A group of Hewlett-Packard engineers in Corvallis, Ore., has built a prototype of a printer that would sell for as little as $1,000 and that might one day permit ordinary consumers to translate their own computer designs directly into plastic objects.

But a more ambitious project to build a high-cost stereo lithographic printer, code-named Zorro, has been canceled, and the low-cost project may be vulnerable to the same pressures.

"It's not clear that 3-D printing has the support needed to solve all of our problems," one of the researchers here said.

I was part of a focus group for HP at a confrence asking what kind of 3D printing we would like to see. I would assume they would develope a type of printer head technology like and Objet machine before going a Fused Deposition route like the RepRap

hi guys, i found a system that costs £750 complete... and that is for everything! check it out on www.bitsfrombytes.co.uk i got one around a week and a half ago now and im currently building it in my spare time. its sooo easy!
russ