10 most disruptive 3D printers in the history of desktop 3D printing | VoxelMatters - The heart of additive manufacturing

Although 3D printing technology emerged in the mid-80s and the vast majority of popular additive techniques followed in the 90s, it remained quite niche and little-known for many years. 3D printing was most commonly referred to as rapid prototyping and was the domain of engineers, designers, and researchers employed in the R&D departments of large manufacturing companies or universities. 3D printers were either industrial machines or R&D tools. They were large, expensive, and required significant engineering knowledge — not necessarily to operate them, but to understand how to utilize their capabilities. Then came some of the most disruptive 3D printers and changed everything.

By any means these were not machines for casual use.

However, all this changed after 2005 when a British academic and scientist, Dr. Adrian Bowyer, created the first “self-replicating” 3D printer as part of the RepRap project. This 3D printer could be made from parts printed on another 3D printer — about 65% of its construction — with the remaining parts available from electronic or hardware stores.

In other words, Bowyer created the first DIY 3D printer.

He based it on FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) technology, developed by Stratasys. In the early years of the project, this technology was still protected by patents, but according to European law, patents do not apply to scientific research projects conducted at universities. However, in 2009, the patent on FDM technology expired, making the commercialization of 3D printers based on the RepRap project legally possible. The only request from Stratasys was not to use the term FDM, which was a registered trademark. So Bowyer coined the term FFF — Fused Filament Fabrication.

The first company in the world to start creating and selling their own designs was the American MakerBot Industries, soon followed by the British BitsFromBytes. After 2010, more companies and designers began to emerge: Josef Průša (founder of PRUSA Research), Martijn Elserman, Erik de Bruijn, and Siert Wijnia (founders of Ultimaker), Jeff Moe (founder of LulzBot and Aleph Objects), and many others.

Initially, they all created 3D printers based on the RepRap project and FDM technology. However, soon new designers appeared, expanding the spectrum of technologies.

Companies like B9 Creations (DLP photopolymer technology), Formlabs (SLA photopolymer technology), and Sintratec and Sinterit (SLS technologies) emerged. Everyone had one goal: to ensure that 3D printers were no longer seen as industrial machines but as desktop devices more accessible to ordinary users.

Low-budget 3D printing came to life thanks to Dr. Adrian Bowyer. His original project evolved significantly, and subsequent 3D printers no longer resembled his original design. Over the years, several groundbreaking desktop 3D printer projects emerged, setting new trends and directions for the entire market.

Here are the TOP 10 most important desktop 3D printers that changed the face of the entire industry…

Among the 10 most disruptive 3D printers, Cupcake was the first commercial, low-budget 3D printer ever sold. Developed by MakerBot Industries, upon its release in April 2009, it turned the entire 3D printing industry on its head. The Cupcake CNC had a tiny build area of 10 x 10 x 13 cm, a wooden plywood case, and a tangle of cables around it, but it cost only $750, while the “competing” Stratasys uPrint Personal Printer cost $14,900.

Although today it’s hard to consider the Cupcake as anything other than a historical curiosity (its successor, the Thing-O-Matic, was already a much more functional device), it marked the beginning of MakerBot’s career — one of the most important companies in the history of 3D printing and all its successors.

Up! Plus and its successors — Up! Plus 2 and Up! Mini — are probably the most underrated desktop 3D printers in the history of the 3D printing industry. Today, few remember their existence and even fewer are aware of how revolutionary these devices were for the development of this market segment. The Chinese Up! printers were the first consumer 3D printers in the world, a designation that was not an overstatement.

Debuting in 2012, the Up! Plus was small and unassuming. Its build area was only 14 cm on each axis, and its design was hardly impressive. However, it had something no other 3D printer had at that time — automatic bed calibration and truly simple and easy-to-use proprietary software. Its manufacturer, Chinese TierTime, boasted that the 3D printer could be up and running within 15 minutes of unboxing. They weren’t lying…

The Up! printers were so perfect in this regard that a year after their release, 3D Systems presented their clones in the form of the Cube, which they based their infamous “3D printer in every home” strategy on.

While all amateur and desktop 3D printers utilized design solutions created either by Bowyer or Scott Crump from Stratasys, Johannes Erdman introduced a completely different approach in 2012. The Rostock Delta enters the 10 most disruptive 3D printers list because it completely changed the approach to kinematics in FDM technology, creating an entirely new line of devices.

Rostock was revolutionary in its construction simplicity and efficiency, allowing it to gain popularity among 3D printing enthusiasts and inspire many subsequent delta models (such as those specialized by the Italian company WASP).

Zortrax is the most decorated Polish company in the 3D printing industry. The source of its success is the M200 — one of the most popular desktop 3D printers on the market from 2014 to 2017. Zortrax started where Up! Plus left off — building its 3D printer on a solid, metal, and stylish construction with a large working area, combined with intuitive proprietary software, automatic bed leveling, and its own line of filaments.

The result was the first desktop 3D printer whose print quality, repeatability, and ease of use matched the high-budget 3D printers from Stratasys. The Zortrax M200 won numerous industry awards worldwide in quality and functionality categories.

Until 2012, all desktop 3D printers printed with thermoplastics using FDM technology. In May of that year, the B9 Creator — a DIY 3D printer printing with photopolymer resins using DLP technology — debuted on Kickstarter. Despite considerable success and raising over half a million dollars, it achieved later relatively moderate market success. It wasn’t until a year later that the low-budget 3D printing industry entered the photopolymer technology segment with a bang, thanks to Formlabs and their first truly desktop 3D printer of this type — The Form 1, certainly one of the most disruptive 3D printers ever.

It was a true sensation and revolution. SLA technology, previously reserved only for giants like 3D Systems, entered homes and small businesses thanks to a small, easy-to-use device that elevated low-budget 3D printing to a whole new level. Today, Formlabs is one of the leaders in the global 3D printing market, and its design has inspired dozens of other companies to develop SLA and DLP technology in a low-budget format.

The Dutch Ultimaker is one of the pioneers of the low-budget 3D printing industry, present on the market since 2011. Its proprietary design — Ultimaker Original — set a new direction in desktop 3D printer design, becoming one of the most frequently copied designs in history. Practically from its inception, the company has also developed one of the most popular free slicers for desktop 3D printers — CURA.

Ultimaker combined high-quality performance with what was then considered fast speeds. Each successive model, 2 and 3, raised the bar higher, making the company one of the biggest players in the 3D printing industry overall.

In 2022, the company merged with MakerBot Industries to form UltiMaker.

The MakerBot Replicator 2 is the 3D printer that ultimately transformed a rapidly growing start-up into a serious manufacturing enterprise, and its leader, Bre Pettis, into the (short-lived) face and icon of the emerging industry. The device hit the market in September 2012, a little over half a year after its wooden predecessor. The Replicator 2 was the first professionally-looking desktop 3D printer, featuring a relatively large build area and one or two print heads.

A few months after its release, in May 2013, MakerBot Industries became part of Stratasys, which preferred not to risk and wait until the Replicator 2 seriously threatened its product line. The quality of the solutions used in it was high enough that these 3D printers continued to function successfully in countless service and production companies worldwide for many years. Its successor — the 5th generation Replicator — never managed to achieve the same level of respect and admiration as the 2012 design.

Darwin is the name of RepRap 1.0 — the world’s first low-budget 3D printer, created by the aforementioned Dr. Adrian Bowyer. Although today the 3D printer looks quite primitive and raw, it was this machine that started the entire revolution from which we benefit today.

Without Darwin, there would be nothing — no MakerBot, Ultimaker, Zortrax, or even The Form 1, which was created as an alternative to the myriad of desktop 3D printers printing with thermoplastics.

In 2022, China’s Bambu Lab debuted “just another crowdfunding campaign” on Kickstarter, promoting its debut 3D printer — the X1. It promised to be really great, offering such functionalities as super-fast 3D printing with 20,000 mm/s² acceleration and 500 mm/s speed, the use of a dedicated “Neural Processing Unit”, thanks to which the 3D printer automatically fine-tunes itself for bed leveling, and provides flow linear advance, vibration compensation, and belt tensioning.

There was also a built-in video camera, cloud communication and a module for automatic change of four filament spools. And all this for just $1,500.

The Kickstarter campaign was a shocking success. The Bambu X1 has raised HK$ 54,970,803 (over 7 million dollars) from 5,575 backers, making it one of the most successful hardware campaigns in the history of Kickstarter (and in terms of 3D printing, the third behind just AnkerMake M5 and Snapmaker 2.0) and giving birth to one of the most disruptive 3D printers ever.

But what happened next is more important. Well, it turned out that Bambu Lab created such an excellent 3D printer that practically the entire industry was left behind… Everyone had to speed up their 3D printers overnight and revise their pricing policies. The fat corporate cats looked at Bambu Lab, first with disdain, then with curiosity, and finally with irritation and horror. Business is no longer the same — the hierarchy of importance has been forever disrupted. The cards were shuffled and everyone had to start the game practically from scratch.

If anyone ever wanted to design a logo for the low-budget 3D printing sector, it would undoubtedly be based on the Prusa i3 — the most popular and most copied 3D printer design in history. The project, created in 2010 by a young Czech named Josef Průša, was essentially a modified and simplified version of Mendel — the second RepRap design by Adrian Bowyer.

However, the project became so popular that it soon replaced its predecessor, and Průša himself continued to work on further developing the design. The result was two more iterations — Prusa i2 and Prusa i3. The latter became an absolute hit, becoming the basis for countless variants worldwide — and consequently, the starting point for the careers of many companies.

There are dozens of companies on the market that develop their business based on this design. Topping this list of the 10 most disruptive 3D printers, Prusa i3 is undoubtedly the most important desktop 3D printer of our time, whose popularity grows year by year.