It took some time, but, in the end, the first 3D printer entirely made in Romania by Symme3D looks like it has been worth the wait. The ubiquitous and democratizing nature of 3D printing continues to manifest itself, as every nation comes up with its own locally manufactured products for localized distributed manufacturing.
The Symme3D system, which is due out by the end of next June, will offer as many as 10 easily interchangeable toolheads, which will give it different 3D printing, milling, and laser engraving capabilities. These will include single, dual, and triple extruders for 3D printing and a 2W or 4W laser etcher for engraving.
The CNC will be available both as a 200W or 400W spindle. Further possibilities include a ceramic extruder, a pen for digital plotting and – I believe this is a first – a pick and place suction head already planned. Such a suction head can be used for automatically picking up small components and placing them exactly where they are required. Needless to say, access to such a mechanism, properly combined with other tools, could open up new roads to personal digital manufacturing.
The Symme3D system will be available in two versions. One is a made in a composite material and will be priced at the equivalent of around $1,500; the other, with a full aluminum body, starts at $2,500. Both will be made available to the open source community. “On the composite version, we are able to offer print speeds of up to 500 mm/s working at 200 micron,” Calin Brandabur, Symme3D’s CEO told me.
“The composite version is running ramps 1.4 with a forked and ‘uber’ optimized Marlin version,” he pointed out, adding that they are “aiming for and 1000mm/s for the full aluminium version, using NEMA 24 motors and a custom build arm based control board.” It seems like a lot of promises for a single system, however the videos are there to back up their claims. See it to believe it (vibration test here).
