Roger Mills wrote:
I see that Maplin is about to offer a 3D printer for £700.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/3d-printer?u...ampaign=13P7-7

Any comments? Is it likely to be worth a punt?

It's Maplin, so you can almost certainly get it for half the price
elsewhere. For example:
http://reprap.org/wiki/Build_A_RepRap
- looks like the Maplin kit is a Wallace clone.

The question is: what do you want to make, and out of what material?
Materials really matter. The PLA that many 3D printers use isn't very
strong - fine for an ornament or a phone case, but you'll notice the gears
and bearings on the 3D printer are made out of nylon which it won't print.
However, it may be a useful platform if you want to experiment with
the materials (will need printing head and software changes).

The other big question: how do you plan to design things to print? Are you
going to download other people's designs? How happy are you with designing
things in 3D CAD (either pointy-clicky or writing code)? It would be very
handy to be able to 'photocopy' 3D objects (broken something? No problem,
just photocopy a replacement) but I don't know of an easy way to do that.
I don't mean AutoCAD/ProE/etc (unless you really must) but it takes a
while to go from 'I want something this shaped' to drawing it and getting
it right in real life.

Worth downloading and getting familiar with some of the CAD tools so you
have a better feel for what you might do with it.

Theo