I swore I'd never do a shameless commercial plug on this blog.
Especially an unsolicited one. But this one has me truly excited, and I
can't figure out why I had to find out from a mass emailed news release
by the distributor. It should have been rumored in the blogs and forums
long ago!
Ireland's Mcor Technologies have created the
IRIS: a 3D printer that builds high-fidelity, photo-realistic physical
3D models in over one million colours from standard copy paper. And it
does it at a mind-bogglingly reasonable cost.
I won't do the cheap thing of editing the press release into my blog. Suffice to say There is every reason to believe the claims of affordable, durable, tactile models, as eco-friendly as the constituent materials of white office paper and conventional colour inks.
The only sticking point I see is that the printer itself is big, and if I infer correctly from the discrepancy between the cost per model and the 'ongoing costs' implied by the news release, probably expensive. This is the opposite of trends in the hobby CNC machines, and the DIY 3D printers. Therefore, most of us will rely on bureaus as we do for large format colour printing, and we will be at the mercy of 'what the market will bear' mark-ups. Even so, I am chuffed.
Imagine what you can do!!!! Soak it in water glass and it's full gloss model maker's heaven.
Download and read the white paper that explains how it works,
here.
In Australia, contact the distributor DGS 3D at
