3D Printers

$539 FlashForge Finder Seeks Out Consumer 3D Printing Market

As the desktop 3D printing industry took off a couple of years back, a number of companies grabbed ahold of MakerBot’s, then, open source ethos and made their own clones, flooding the Chinese market with low-cost MakerBot clones.  However, only a few of these companies have built up a reliable brand, evolving as the industry does with new models and a customer base. Among them is FlashForge, which has grown to be a popular manufacturer among Makers for their low-cost machines.  In fact, their products were deemed good enough for hardware maker Dremel to rebrand the FlashForge Dreamer as the Dremel Idea Builder, with both versions of the machine being touted by die hard fans as among the best desktop machines out there. Well, FlashForge fans will be happy to know that the company has released its latest 3D printer with some great user-friendly features and a price that’s hard to beat.

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The FlashForge Finder is designed to be a consumer-friendly machine that incorporates a number of important features that make it fit for families, schools, and novice users.  To start, the machine itself looks as though it can plug and play right out of the box.  The Finder features a 3.5-inch touch screen, with print preview function and multilingual operation, as well as assisted bed leveling, filament-run-out detection, and wi-fi, USB, and flash drive connectivity.  The company uses its own slicer software, which includes intelligent support structures.

flashforge finder 3D printer specs

FlashForge claims that this new machine satisfies UL, CE, and FC standards of safety, with ISO9001 Quality System, ISO14001 Environment Management System, OHSAS18000 Occupational Health and Safety Standard authentication.  Without a heated bed, the single-extruder Finder can only use PLA, which has been RoHS certified.  It also has a compact build volume of 140mm x 140mm x 140mm (about 5.5″ x 5.5″ x 5.5″) and can achieve 100 micron layer thicknesses.  All of this comes at a very modest price of only $539.

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Altogether, the Finder looks to be FlashForge’s consumer model. Though it may not have all of the features of the company’s more robust printers, it seems to have been designed to be as easy to use as possible, all with wi-fi and a home-friendly aesthetic.  And, at such a low price point, the FlashForge Finder may just find a new audience of schools and families. Based on the reputation of their other machines, the Finder could be just as successful, too.