SXSW 2013: How The MakerBot 3D Printer Really Works

If you follow our social media outlets, you might have seen that we are currently covering SXSW 2013 in Austin, Texas. We will try to cover the most exciting and newsworthy topics we can possibly find. To kick off this quite exciting week, I thought I’d start by covering a topic that is near and dear to my heart, 3D printing. We managed to get an in-depth interview with TechShop‘s Carl Johnson who told us how exactly their MakerBot 3D printer actually works.

3D printing has become the new cool among home tinkerers, and it’s paving the way to new and groundbreaking innovations that we otherwise wouldn’t see for a very long time. With a 3D printer, you can easily put together the components, or even your entire invention, while working out the kinks. It has come to revolutionize the way inventors work and is most likely going to optimize how we all do things in the future as well. The MakerBot 3D printer was one of the first 3D printers to hit the market for consumers, and they are now showcasing their MakerBot 3D printer “Replicator 2.”

Our press reporter, Jeff Kell, and TechShop’s Carl Johnson went into detail about how this printer actually works. This is something that we here at Bit Rebels get questions about regularly, and we’re happy to unveil the secrets of just how a 3D printer, especially the MakerBot 3D printer, works and what makes it such a revolutionary device.

Contrary to common belief, a 3D printer doesn’t work in 3 dimensions. It actually works in 2 dimensions, adding a third as it works its way through the model being printed. By heating up the printing material and layering it in 2 dimensions, x and z, the MakerBot 3D printer actually adds the y dimension as it builds the printed model from the ground up. It’s a process that takes time, but it creates a super durable structure in almost the same amount of time it took the matrix printer to print an A4 document back in the ’80s. Have a look at the video which goes into more detail about why the MakerBot 3D printer has become such a huge phenomenon.