Regular printers may be boring, but 3D printers are not. Not only can they be used to create new bones and military spiderbots, they can also be used to make figments of your imagination come to life. If you're thinking of getting your own, check out the newly-announced MakerBot Replicator. Sure, you can't print a car out with it, but it can at least make larger objects that its predecessor, the Thing-O-Matic. It can also use two colors at once.
MakerBot Industries, which makes artificial hermit crab shells on the side, unveiled the Replicator at the recent 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company's new product can make objects as big as a loaf of bread, which is great if you have super sized printing needs. You can even choose between the kind of plastic Lego bricks are made of or biodegradable corn plastic for its feedstock, which is what you call the spools of material it uses to print your creations. It can make you dual-colored figures, too, though this feature will cost you extra.
Unlike the Thing-O-Matic that you have to build on your own, the Replicator will be shipped fully-assembled. This means it comes ready to print objects that you've either designed on your own using a 3D modeling program or downloaded from the internet. Now available for pre-order, the basic Replicator model will cost you $1,749, while the one that's capable of dual-color printing costs $250 on top of that.
(Source)This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca
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