In Depth: Adventures in 3D printing: what it’s like to make your own household items

In Depth: Adventures in 3D printing: what it's like to make your own household items

By Bill Loguidice

In Depth: Adventures in 3D printing: what it's like to make your own household items

Adventures in 3D printing

There’s no denying 3D printing your own plastic creations is an amazing experience, one that lets you exercise your creative muscles and watch your very own products come to life right before your eyes. It’s fun to print an on-demand toy, smartphone case, guitar pick, or virtually any other idea that might pop into your head.

Although some of those items might prove useful, how practical is it to 3D print something of value versus simply buying it from a store? Sure, there’s always the satisfaction of DIY making, but is that the only advantage?

To help answer those questions, I printed four common household items using an inexpensive 3D printer, New Matter’s MOD-t ($399, about £305, AU$524). The MOD-t represents a good balance between low-end consumer friendly printers and higher-end, do-it-yourself models.

At its simplest, the MOD-t uses a web-based interface to access an optimized library of free and paid 3D models. For more advanced users, you can import and use 3D models from other sources, including your own creations.

Since this isn’t a how-to guide, I’ll stick with free, pre-made designs from Thingiverse, one of the more popular 3D model repositories. Of course, …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Computing Components

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