Hyrel offers an extruder on its E series printers - like the $1,245 E2 - that can print using any air-dried material, such as clay, Plasticine or the popular air-cured plastic Sugru. Relatively low-cost printers that can use materials other than plastic are beginning to appear on the market. They typically use 1.75 or 3mm filament, which is widely available on rolls in a range of colors. Key Features & Accessories: Most printers of this type include basic software, but some come with no software, leaving you to find open-source solutions. They are usually relatively straightforward to set up and configure.Ĭons: This type of 3D printer prints only one color or material at a time, and the build area is usually fairly small - typically about 4 x 4 x 4 inches (10 x 10 x 10 centimeters).

Pros: Low-cost, simple printers are an ideal entry point for 3D printing. Budget printers have a single nozzle for laying down the filament. There are two possible types of plastic: ABS, or an organic version known as PLA. A plastic filament is melted and then deposited in thin layers that build up the model.

These printers use a process typically called filament deposition manufacturing (FDM). The cheapest 3D printers are simple models, like the $749 Printrbot Simple with Heated Bed or the $999 Cubify Cube 3 (see review). There are a lot of parts, but most kits require just basic mechanical knowledge: If you've put together an Ikea bookshelf, you can build a 3D-printer kit. The prebuilt models are easier start with, but the kits offer better insight into how these printers work, and allow you to customize and tweak them yourself when they are up and running. Most 3D printers come fully assembled and ready to print, but some are sold as kits that you assemble yourself. MORE: XYZ Da Vinci 3D Printer/Scanner Review: Mixed Results More-advanced (and expensive) 3D printers use a resin, and the most-expensive models use a powder that is melted or liquefied (and then quickly hardens) to bind to the layer below it. Most consumer models are filament printers, which use a thin string of plastic that is melted in the extruder, where the molten plastic drops onto the building surface.

How the 3D printer prints these slices to form the final model varies. (Image credit: MakerBot Digitizer: Original shell (left) and 3D-printed copy made from scan.

3d printer small objects