Additive Manufacturing at CES

The first two days of CES have shone a spotlight on continuing developments in additive manufacturing (AM). Rapid Ready covered 3D Systems’ CES premiere of the next-generation Cube and the new CubeX. MakerBot created a stir at the electronics convention with its announcement of the Replicator 2X.

With, perhaps, a bit less fanfare than that surrounding the newest offerings from 3D Systems and MakerBot, Afinia gained some attention for its home 3D printer, the H-Series. While not a new release, the H-Series is a good example of the variety of AM systems available.

The specs for the system are pretty standard. It uses ABS or PLA plastic filament, and has a build envelope of 5.5 x 5.5 x 5.3 in. (140 × 140 × 135 mm), which is nearly identical to the Cube. The H-Series has a layer thickness of between 0.20 – 0.40 mm, and prints at 10 – 100 cm³/h.

The angle Afinia is selling is ease of use. The H-Series comes in one piece out of the box, ready for calibration and use. The on-board software directly accepts .stl files and will notify the user if there isn’t enough material to finish a print. At $1,499, I think the price is a bit high for a home system, but perhaps the company is looking to attract some small business attention as well.

Moving toward the application end of AM, Panasonic demonstrated a 56-in. organic light-emitting diode (OLED) television with 4k resolution (3,840 x 2,160 resolution, 8.29 million pixels). The TV is only a half-inch thick and weighs 27 lbs. The estimated price tag is $25,000. While a super huge television is cool and all, it isn’t the size that makes this distraction device interesting from a Rapid Ready point of view.

The monster prototype was constructed using AM to lay down organic layers of red, green and blue, the old RBG printing method of creating colors. Using AM for the manufacturing process in the future would create less waste and also mean the technology could be fairly easily scaled down to smaller, more market friendly sized display screens.

Below you’ll find a video about the Afinia H-Series.

Sources: Afinia, Panasonic