Affordable home-use 3D printers available soon in China

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-02-05

A customer displays a 3D printing product at a store in Beijing.
(Photo/Xinhua)

Three-dimensional printers meant for home desktop use, priced between 3,000 yuan (US$481) and 5,000 yuan (US$802) are available on the internet in China, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

Industry insiders predicted that after the applications of 3D printing technology start being used widely, the prices of related office products and printers would also drop accordingly. In the future, 3D printers will become more affordable for households.

In an offer the first of its kind, a newly opened store in Beijing allowed consumers to try 3D printing. It was reported that the prices charged by the store for 3D printing differed, based on the size of the finished products and the types of materials used. For instance, the price of printing a 15-cm high figurine was about 800 yuan (US$128).

These prices were still high for some ordinary consumers, the report said, adding that the 3D printers used in the store were imported precision machines priced at tens of thousands of yuan and the prices of materials it used were also high, making printing more expensive.

The reporter found after searching for information on e-commerce site Taobao that some domestically produced 3D printers were priced at only several thousand yuan.

Desktop 3D printers usually employ ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) and PLA (poly lactic acid) as raw materials, which were priced at 100 yuan (US$16) to 150 yuan (US$24), and were both non-toxic and safe and had no smell, a customer service representative at a Taobao store said.

However, this home use printer can only print models with simple shapes. More complicated models, such as a human face, cannot be made using 3D printers priced at below 10,000 yuan (US$1,604).

The applications offered by 3D printers are wide. They can be used to produce models, gifts and do-it-yourself toys. The hurdles of extending the use of 3D printers to households are not posed by prices, but various types of products, including samples and designs that can be used for printing.

If consumers do not possess the know-how of producing 3D models using computers, buying a 3D printer will still be useless for them.

"The use of smartphones is so prevalent because of a large number of developers and application downloading channels. A production chain has been formed in the industry," the owner of the 3D printing store said.

The owner added that the promotion of 3D printers in households could be done by implementing further price cuts and developing more talent and application downloading channels that allowed users to download samples.