Earlier today, Arduino gave the world a sneak peek of its own branded 3D printer, the Arduino Materia 101. First shared on the Arduino Twitter account and introduced by co-founder Massimo Banzi on Italian national television, the white and teal device will be presented next weekend at Maker Faire Rome.

Fellow Arduino co-founder David Cuartielles later confirmed the company’s latest innovation by tweeting…

Based on initial glance, it appears that the printer is equipped with an LCD screen, a control knob and a switch on the front plate, with a matching filament spool holder attached to its right side.

Writing for MAKE Magazine, Mike Senese notes that the machine is the largest piece of hardware that our friends over at Arduino have launched to date.

“It’s an interesting move for the company, but not an entirely disconnected element, as many of the printer developments in the 3D community have used [megaAVR powered] Arduino boards for control. Moreover, it further indicates how bigger companies are starting to release 3D printers,” he writes.

According to 3discover.it, the printer is a collaboration between Arduino and Italian 3D printer manufacturer Sharebot. Judging by the first images of Massimo Banzi’s announcement on the Italian TV channel RAI 3, the Arduino Materia will be based on Sharebot’s open source architecture and leverage the company’s familiarity with FFF technology.

For now, we’ll have to wait for its official debut at Maker Faire Rome…

This is just the latest piece of exciting news from Arduino in recent weeks. Just last weekend, Atmel and Arduino announced the launch of the Arduino Wi-Fi Shield 101, a shield that enables rapid prototyping of Internet of Things (IoT) applications on the highly-popular open-source platform; while if you recall back in May, the team debuted the Arduino ZERO development board – a simple, elegant and powerful 32-bit extension of the platform originally established by the popular Uno.