Printder - Turn Your2D Printer into a 3D Printer

[Brian_Krassenstein]

A company called Printder has recently launched a website claiming that they have come up with an innovative technique for turning most 2D printers into fully capable 3D printers. The process relies on special paper and ink. The printer prints layer after layer on the paper, and when done the stack of paper is then placed into a typical over for 15 minutes. This fuses the pages together via the special ink. The leftover paper on the exterior of the intended printed object then dissolves by being placed in water while the sections covered with ink do not dissolve. What do you guys think? More details on Printder can be found here: http://3dprint.com/55991/printder-2d-printer-3d

[curious aardvark]

well it's very similiar to how the mcor printer works.

I guess for crude basic models it could work :-)

Pretty neat idea, if potentially quite expensive. No matter how small or large your model you waste a stack of A4 (or a5 I suppose for smaller models) for every print.
Although you can cram a few models into each print.

3D printing from a 2D printer is a fascinating concept and would be an interesting development in the world of additive manufacturing.

It's basically subtractive manufacturing rather than additive manuacturing.
You're removing all the paper that isn't part of your model. Not actually adding to an existing model.
But yeah - it's a good idea. Interested to see some actual results. And, the print should be full colour too. as well as bloody solid.

I suspect the expensive bit will be the special paper.

But definitely something that will appeal to an awful lot of people who maybe want to try 3d printing without buying a machine.

[3dkarma]

It's going to be very difficult to get the pages to line up properly on every sheet. I thing the resulting quality isn't going to be that great.

[DavidS]

While it is an interesting idea, it will be very expensive. The materials cost will be so great that after two smallish prints you would have saved money by building a proper extruder type 3D printer and buying a couple of KG of filament for it. Or even purchasing a decent 3D printer and a few KG of filament would be less expensive.

[cederron]

While it is an interesting idea, it will be very expensive. The materials cost will be so great that after two smallish prints you would have saved money by building a proper extruder type 3D printer and buying a couple of KG of filament for it. Or even purchasing a decent 3D printer and a few KG of filament would be less expensive.

How do you know materials are expensive?
do you work at Printder ?


The main issue as someone wrote above will be layer aligning.