This ain’t the same Digitizer we saw back at South by Southwest. The prototype that was unveiled in Austin back in March looked an awful lot like those early generation MakerBot printers, borrowing heavily from the plywood aesthetic that seemed to imply that its creators had built the thing with their own hands. The version the company showed off at SXSW was in keeping with the company’s mission statement of building things themselves, featuring a laser-cut wood frame and 3D printed parts. But the Brooklyn company’s come a long way since those simpler RepRap days, growing into the leading light in the world of consumer-facing 3D printers.
The Replicator 2 really drove the point home with a solidly constructed black frame that eschewed its predecessors’ wood finish, and the Digitizer can easily be viewed as part of a matching set. “The MakerBot Digitizer started because I really wanted a 3D scanner to go with our 3D printer,” said CEO Bre Pettis at today’s event at the company’s office in Brooklyn, “and they were all too expensive.” The 3D scanner joins the Replicator, MakerWare and the online community Thingiverse as the major missing piece of the MakerBot ecosystem puzzle, an attempt to create the most user-friendly 3D-printing ecosystem available. Now you can download, create and scan your way into the 3D-printing world, from the comfort of your own (admittedly sizable) desktop.%Gallery-slideshow89888%
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