WheresWaldo

So I am happy you see that additive manufacturing has a place and can do things that machining cannot. But there are also things that can be designed that cannot be printed without support material or in separate pieces. Here is an article about a company called Charge Bikes that co-developed a set of 3D printed titanium dropouts. 3ders.org - Charge Bikes & EADS 3D printing titanium bicycle parts | 3D Printing news, the original article was from road.cc but it appears gone from their website, it was from 2012.


Sadly no for the most part. Low end (<= $1000) usually rely on a collection of opensource software, mid to higher end consumer printers may or may not have proprietary software included (usually $1200 +), of course commercial printers are all likely proprietary. The Dremel has some good reviews for a plug and pray kind of printer, it is a copy of the Flashforge Dreamer (review) with a few less options. Makerbot, like so many others that do it their way only has both lovers and haters. They are a closed system and many Makers (that is what 3D printer people call themselves) are very against closed systems. But is is popular and it does work.

The most common Slicer/Print software used in consumer 3D printing is Repetier-Host, Cura and Slic3r. There are a slew of free and paid 3D modeling software. Here is an incomplete list of free and commercial software: http://www.3ders.org/3d-software/3d-software-list.html