I know that, coming on the heels of the Inside 3D Printing Conference & Expo Seoul just last week, everyone may be thinking that there wouldn’t be much news coming out of Korea so soon, but you would be wrong. This week, the Nano Korea 2015 Show in the COEX exhibition center in downtown Seoul was held, and included in this massive expo was the 3rd ProtoKor (Korea Prototype Manufacturing Exhibition & 3D Printing User Conference) Show.
The ProtoKor Show was actually only one of six shows that comprised the event; the others included the 13th International nano Technology Expo, the 6th International Laser Technology Exhibition, the 2nd International Bionics Technology Forum & Expo, and the International MicroNano Systems Exhibition & Symposium. The entire conference took up both exhibit halls ‘A’ and ‘B’ and was comprised of over 300 booths and exhibitors from 17 different countries.
While there were more graphene, drone, bionic, and laser displays than you could shake a stick at, my interest was absorbed by the 3D printing sections. And I was really glad I made the trip, as I not only saw some familiar faces, I also met some new friends.
Moment was there with their brand new second model, a slimmer, dare I say…sexier, version of their solid original. It has the same size build area as the original, but a small exterior box. It also has a front cover door to help maintain temperatures in the build chamber, and comes in black. A minor point to be sure, but black is my color.
Rokit was right next door with their newest machines, including their AEP, and the new Edison S. Both machines were drawing their fair share of attention, especially the Edison S…probably due to its fairly friendly, colorful appearance and price.
I also discovered four new 3D Printer manufacturers that I had never encountered before. Though three were FDM-style machines, each had a slightly different take on the topic. But the forth really got my attention, even though they didn’t have an actual machine at the show. It was a delta-style printer, which was ‘foldable’ for easy transport! Put out by ‘Lab311’, information on it can be found at lab311.com, along with information on their conductive inks for inkjet printers.
As for the other machines that were there, the first and probably the best was a company called Vis Tech, who sported a selection of 3 new machines at the show, all of which looked solid. Two of them had sealed build chambers, but all had heated build plates and could use both PLA and ABS. Prices ranged between $1K to $2K depending.
The next was the Wiiboox, which, at first, I thought was somehow connected to Nintendo, but it is not. The Wiiboox had an attractive black acrylic case, a heated build plate, and dual extruders. I didn’t get to see it actually print anything, but they had several very impressive prints for inspection at the table. No word on the price.
The third was a small DIY kit from a company called 3dsnp, which I was assured would only take an hour or two to put together at home…without any engineering experience needed! Well, I would like to put that claim to the test, and may in the near future. If I do, I will let you know the results. For now, it was enough to see that it had an extruded aluminum rail frame, heated build platform, and a single extruder.
The last was, from a company called Lincsolution, was the most interesting, in that, like all the other boxy gantry printers out there, it was square…but the internal mechanics were a bit different. Instead of the build platform moving up and down on the Z-axis, it was fixed to the bottom of the printer and the gantry assembly moved up and down. This allowed the machine to have a solid “roof” on the top (rather than being open like most FDM printers), which meant that the only opening in the printer’s solid aluminum box case was the front. Oddly enough, it was not fitted with a front door, but, if it had been, it would have been a completely sealed build chamber. And I don’t think we need to discuss the value of that for people who like to print with ABS.
All in all, a great show, but way too much for one person to see, especially with the limited time I had available that day. I know I missed A LOT of stuff, especially in the bionics section, where they had medical assistive exoskeletons, blood-vessel biometric scanners (for ID verification) ,and personal heart rate monitors, just to name a few. Oh well, there is always next year.
