TCT 2016 Review

[Sebastian Finke]

Today I visited the 2016 TCT Show at the NEC in Birmingham. In a few words: it was absolutely amazing and covered everything from home/desktop printing to high level, cutting edge industrial printing.

The consumer/desktop grade brands were represented in great variety i.e. printers, filaments, accessories and scanners. Printers were represented by Makerbot (all working btw ), Ultimaker, Zortrax, Up!, Lulzbot and many more. Some of the new printers were simply mind blowing. They are very well built and look the business. Much has changed in the last two years since I bought mine. Filament brands were certainly in abundance. I got much loot. Again there has been a lot of development in this area. I look forward to many weekends of 'product testing'. Accessories (steppers, belts, pulleys, etc) and scanners from 3D Systems, Einscan and others I already forgot were there too.

There were also a ton of industrial and commercial grade product available. To be honest my interest in these was fleeting as they are way out of my affordability. Laser metal sintering has certainly come a long way too. The prints and machines on show that I looked at were truly amazing. In particular the hybrid CNC mill and laser sintering machine. They made an entire cavity plate in one setup in 24 hours! This normally involves machining/drilling from six sides and EDM that could take days using normal procedures. Wow. Representing this sector were Stratasys, Renishaw, Sodick, HP and others. (Yes, HP was there and had working printers. Top shelf stuff)

I went mainly to see to companies. Polymaker and 3Dfilaprint. Polymaker make an amazing range of filaments come highly recommended. I got many samples to try and their Polywood and Polysupport are getting great reviews across the board. 3Dfilaprint have a reputation as the best filament supplier in the UK and it was great to finally meet the team. Beyond that I met many more great companies from across the globe.

To top it off I also got to meet Chris from 'Explaining The Future' and James from 'XRobots'. If Barnacules was there it would have beat Christmas...

To follow, some photos...