05-27-2015: Zortrax presented Inventure
A groundbreaking 3D printer that never lived up to its promises
On May 27, 2015 Zortrax presented Inventure – an innovative and worthy successor to the amazing M200 3D printer. Zortrax M200 has set new standards in the field of manufacturing of desktop FDM / FFF 3D printers and the design of complex ecosystems including hardware, software and materials.
Zortrax Inventure was to take this even further, offering solutions that at that time were reserved only for industrial-class devices. Everything indicated that it would be a spectacular sales success and that Zortrax would become the absolute leader of the global desktop 3D printing market. If only it worked...
In fact, Inventure was a much cheaper, but incomparably nicer version of Stratasys uPrint or Mojo, which were slowly disappearing from the market at that time. It was equipped with two print heads, one for 3D printing from the base material and the other from the support material. It had a tightly closed and heated build chamber with a HEPA filter. The bed was made of plastic and could be used "several times". Build area was 13 x 13 x 13 cm. The filament was fed in cartridges. And this is what caused the most problems for the company...
The idea was simple for industrial 3D printing, but truly innovative for desktop 3D printing, which was just emerging from the amateur sector. One printhead was to 3D print mainly from ABS (in the form of the proprietary Z-ULTRAT), and the other from a support - initially it was supposed to be HIPS soluble in limonene.
The problem was that it didn't work... The first batch of 3D printers sold (at the autumn fair in France) was returned to Zortrax in its entirety. Then a change was made and HIPS was replaced with water-soluble PVA, but before all the technological nuances were mastered, mid-2015 became mid-2017.
And in the meantime, in the fall of 2016, the Ultimaker 3 hit the market, with all the above-mentioned functionalities, but was bigger and worked just out-of-the-box! No one was waiting for Inventure anymore.
I have been a user of a fleet of 10 Zortrax Inventures and overall I rate these 3D printers very highly. During the C19 pandemic, they allowed us to implement a whole lot of great projects. Unfortunately, they did not take advantage of their great opportunity.
Source: www.centrumdruku3d.pl