Four young scientists, accompanied by Eskom Expo’s Business Manager, Mmamoloko Rancia Riba, won their place to represent the country at the Indonesia competition, renowned…
‘Peachy Printer’ is world’s ‘first’ $100 3D printer
3D printing is “cool”. It’s the type of stuff we dreamed about ever since Star Wars and matter replicators were a thing. But, price has prohibited almost all of us from owning a slice of the future. Good news everyone! A Kickstarter project called “Peachy Printer” aims to sort us out with a R1000 (US$100) 3D printer which apparently even your grandma can use. It’s also from Canada. Will the Peachy Printer be annoyingly friendly, ey? No, just useful.
Rinnovated Design reinvented how the 3D printer works, using completely new methods that don’t require the same expensive parts. Peachy was created over nine months ago, using “simple household items for next to nothing”. The creator, Rylan Grayston, spent over CAD$10 000 to ensure that his final product would be “saleable”. Watching the video above, it’s hard not to identify Grayston with some of the greatest inventors of our time. The man literally had a dream, that will benefit us all, and it’s a vision that he built from scratch. Here’s how it works:
It’s all about the resin. A beam of light “cures light sensitive resin into hard objects”. Current 3D printers use injection moulding to squeeze shapes out, kind of like a tube of toothpaste. Peachy is the inverse of this and forms a resin-moulded shape from a custom drip system, controlled by an audio wave form, 3D data and mirrors. Science is marvelous. Grayston’s process is fully explained in the video below.
Grayston’s project required US$50 000. Currently Peachy Printer is funded multiple times over, sitting at over CAD$430 306 (US$417 002). The minimum bid to grab a Peachy was CAD$90, but this was only open to 100 funders and has long vanished. Luckily, there’s a CAD$100 pledge which supplies the entire Peachy Printer kit which apparently takes “under and hour” to setup. Or…
Pledge a crazy CAD$6000 and “we will attempt to print a full-sized canoe”. If they fail or not, you’ll get the printer that did it. Sounds like a solid bet to us. The project is funded, and we’re ecstatic that the cheap 3D printer revolution has finally begun.
