Following several weeks of teasing and cryptic messages about the “un-industrial revolution,” Mayku, a London-based creative technology company, has finally filled in the blanks and revealed what exactly it means by all this – a stylish grey box called the Multiplier.
The Multiplier isn’t just any old box (but what a pretty box it is.) No, it’s a pressure former, which is a little different from a vacuum former, such as the company’s 2018-released Formbox.
Pressure forming is a technology more likely to be seen on the industrial factory floor, not on a kitchen counter or studio shelf. While the Formbox used any regular vacuum cleaner to expunge air from beneath a heated plastic sheet, the Multiplier is different. It uses an internal compressor and steel tanks to generate up to four atmospheres of pressure. This forces the molding sheet onto your object and can, Mayku claims, capture grooves and lines as fine as 3 microns.
The Multiplier was designed in collaboration with Teenage Engineering, which will mean different things to different people. Some may know them for their irresponsibly cool synthesizer boards and gizmos—others, for the company’s collab with IKEA on the Frekvens music and lighting system.
As for actual tangible use of the Multiplier, the device has a 400 mm diameter working area with 160 mm of height above it. It can handle forming sheets up to 8 mm thick. These sheets, as sold by Mayku, range from PETG to unspecified (but named for their purpose) sheets such as flex and resin (for silicone-like and resin-based work, respectively.)
If your home or small business project calls for mold-making, a device such as the Multiplier seems to makes sense. It is, essentially, a much more capable and higher-detail version of the Formbox. It would make for a great combo with a 3D printer, though if the claimed detail capture is true, you’d need to post-process your prints before molding from them.
The Multiplier will retail for $4,999 (£3,499) when it launches in October. A limited run of 100 preorders (from Oct. 5, 2021) will have an early-bird discount of sorts, costing just $1,999 (£1,449.) Those tickled by this discount can sign up for an alert about pre-orders over on the Mayku website.
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