When Scott Crump, CEO and co-founder of Stratasys Inc., invented fused deposition modeling (FDM) in 1989, he had one goal in mind: to design a system that would allow engineers to create high quality, low cost three-dimensional prototypes as easily as they could print two-dimensional descriptions of them.
With the announcement of its Mojo 3D Printing System -- the company's newest, smallest (and cheapest) desktop rapid prototyping machine -- it looks like he may have finally met that goal.
In a very real sense, the Mojo, released today by Stratasys, marks a new epoch in the 3D printing industry -- an epoch in which affordable, easy-to-use printers may enable more engineers to bring products from design to market faster and more efficiently than ever before.
This may sound like the usual 3D printing hysteria that surrounds releases like this, but, measuring only 25 inches wide and 18 inches tall and with a single layer resolution of .007 inch, the Mojo may actually live up to this game-changer hype.
The new printer actually contains a lot of new and innovative features like the integrated support removal system and replaceable heads, but there are two key points that promise to deliver on these claims more than any other: price and reliability.
