21st July 2013

The world's first full-colour 3D desktop printer

London and New York-based company botObjects recently announced the ProDesk3D, which they claimed to be the first full-colour 3D printer small enough to fit on a desktop. In addition to its colour abilities and compactness, they confirmed that it would print at 25 microns – some four times more accurate than its competitors (Makerbot's Replicator 2 has a resolution of 100 microns).

This gives an extremely smooth finish, overcoming the issue of surface grooves which often appear in 3D-printed objects. The machine uses different-coloured cartridges on the fly, just like an inkjet printer, instead of requiring single-colour spools of raw plastic to be swapped out. This includes a palette of new "translucent" PLA colours for some impressive blending effects, customisable with software on Windows 7 and Mac OS X. There is no complex or tricky set up, as the ProDesk3D arrives out-of-the-box complete.

The company has received over 100,000 enquiries and expects to ship its first orders by 1st October 2013. The standard and limited edition models both have a somewhat hefty price tag of nearly $3,000 each, making them high-end products. However, the cost of 3D printing has fallen in recent years and if this continues, it is expected to become a mainstream consumer technology by 2020.

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