After establishing a strong presence on both the professional and the low cost FFF 3D printer market with its X400 and its NEO models, German RepRap is now taking on the industrial sector introducing a new, huge 3D printer with a volume of 1000x800x600 mm, not far away from Stratasys’ top of the line system, the Fortus 900mc.
The new system, which, as German RepRaps cares to emphasize, is not an evolution of its X400 but rather is an entirely new machine, built from scratch, will be presented at the Euromold show in Frankfurt at the end of November, where huge swathes of the manufacturing sector will convene to show off their new products.
For German RepRap, the decision to develop a new large format system was based on user feedback, with many among the X400 adopters requesting the possibility of 3D printing larger objects or to be able to produce a large number of smaller objects in parallel.
“Our goal is to offer a complete range of products for commercial customers,” explains Florian Bautz, managing director of German RepRap. “Having said that, the new printer is not an enlarged X400, it has been developed from the ground up.”
The new German RepRap 3D printer, which does not have an official name yet, will feature multi-extruder technology, intelligent filament management and a more intuitive user interface. For very large print jobs, layer height can be set as high as 500 micron. The systems’ price has not yet been announced either, although it will likely be very competitive compared with other industrial level 3D printers, thus opening up yet another part of the 3D printing market.
