CTC Electronic is quickly becoming a 3D printing powerhouse, releasing a new product what seems like every two months. After unveiling an SLA 3D printer, a large-format desktop 3D printer, and a dual printhead machine, the Chinese company has launched a hybrid 3D printer, called the Formaker, on Kickstarter.
Priced at $999 on the crowdfunding site, the modular Formaker is capable of CNC engraving, laser cutting, and PCB etching, in addition to dual-extruder FFF 3D printing. Controlling it via LCD color touchscreen, the hybrid machine’s dual head printer extrudes 1.75mm filament in a print volume of 225 x 145 x 150mm.
The Formaker features a 350-milliwatt laser (the very real one pictured above) to carve images into card stock, leather, and wood. The CNC module can carve into wood, acrylic, Lexan, brass, aluminum, or plastic. This module is also responsible for the PCB etching, promised by the CTC device. While their hybrid machine is compatible with third-party software like Cura for 3D printing, it runs on a CTC platform for its other functions, designed to switch between CNC, Laser, and PCB functions easily.
The Formaker is the result of a year-long collaboration between CTC, led by the firm’s Chris Donovan in the US, and Don Mint in India, along with Yang Ming, a structural design specialist in the UK. The machine is being produced in the Chinese company’s 8,000 square-meter facility, which CTC claims is able to produce 5,000 3D printers per month.
CTC Electronic, which was founded in 2004, is pushing itself to becoming the leading 3D printer manufacturer through sheer output alone. Perhaps because the desktop 3D printer industry has evolved quite rapidly since 2012, it seems that the manufacturer may be striving to both catch-up with and then outpace the competition by releasing every type of 3D printer under the sun, including a full-color 3D printer by CES in January of 2016.
Aside from the Polish ZMorph and Italian FABtotum, CTC is the first large desktop 3D printer manufacturer to jump into the hybrid 3D printing game, and at a significantly lower price point. Though I’ve heard that people are happy with their baseline CTC 3D printers, we’ll have to see if the other machines have been manufactured as well as they have been quickly. Check out the Formaker at Kickstarter to learn more.
I’m not terribly impressed with this design. While the price may be less
expensive than other models, it lacks the same robustness as other
models. I don’t see the distinction between .05mm and .04mm
layer resolution. Also, the spindle doesn’t appear to be as powerful as other
models on the market, and the weak laser falls short of the 2W lasers
that are quickly becoming the standard.
@Leather Engineer, what other models in the current market would you suggest?
it hasn’t hit the market yet, but my current favorite is BoXZY (featured on kickstarter). It features a 2W laser, robust cnc spindle, and 3d printer with .05mm layer height (and possibly better). It’s available for pre-order. I personally like how hack-able it is; I can see a lot of attachments being designed for it in the future.
Thanks for sharing.
Kickstarter was canceled, then restarted, then canceled again. The US design office seems to be in some kind of fight with the Chinese partner. They are now taking pre-orders at their web site, but unfortunately now have this distracting history which may indicate trouble of many kinds.
I believe this on-again, off-again KS strategy is going to be problematic for the company’s onsite pre-orders because a lot of their early adopters will have seen this poor track record. People want to invest in stability, and this doesn’t show that. $1000 puts this product on the more affordable side of the market, but certainly not “throw away” money for most consumers.