Posted: 3/13/2011 12:38:45 PM EDT
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt3EGgtSAUc And the PolyJet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5scCMxuciY |
3D printing is a very cool (slightly geeky and slightly gimmicky at the moment) opensource movement. You can get into it for a few hundred at the moment. It's on my long list of things to do. It's a long and expensive list though, 3D printers might take a while to get to  http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page |
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HP bought a 3D printing company about 3 years ago now, and they have a small "desktop" version that's about 6,000, still alot of cash and it's not really what I think of as a desktop printer either.
The latest ones I've seen are using metal powder instead of plastic for the printing too, it's something I'm keeping an eye on as I want one to play about with. |
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3D printing with metal:
http://www.evo.co.uk/features/features/261526/3d_printing_is_this_the_future.html |
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Quoted: 3D printing with metal: http://www.evo.co.uk/features/features/261526/3d_printing_is_this_the_future.html The technology is getting there, the metal sintering process is now being used by a customer I work with to create injection moulds for small batches (5000 - 7500 parts) the process does work but starts to deteriate very quickly at the 10000 part threshhold, the moulds work out cheaper only because of the time to manucture and the fact they use a university to produce them, it takes about 72 hours to produce a small mould of about 100mm square. the corn starch ones are quicker but obviously not as durable, and the ones that produce the plastic components are more durable but more expensive. also size is quite limited on some of the machines, on the more industrial machines you can pretty much do anything! |
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Quoted: I think it's amazing. Great fun to play with and the possibilities are almost endless. Not sure what I'd print though..... Out of curiosity, roughly how much does a small object cost in 'ink', take for example that adjustable wrench in the video? Its all done on volume and fill type, for example, a square block (5mmm cubed)with a sparse centre fill meaning the outside faces are high qyuality but the centre is honeycombed could cost £10, but a solid adjustable wrench say a 6" could cost more than buying one from the shop! They are great things i've had a fair few things prototyped using them, |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
I think it's amazing. Great fun to play with and the possibilities are almost endless. Not sure what I'd print though..... Out of curiosity, roughly how much does a small object cost in 'ink', take for example that adjustable wrench in the video? Its all done on volume and fill type, for example, a square block (5mmm cubed)with a sparse centre fill meaning the outside faces are high qyuality but the centre is honeycombed could cost £10, but a solid adjustable wrench say a 6" could cost more than buying one from the shop! They are great things i've had a fair few things prototyped using them, Indeed 
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Quoted:
I think it's amazing. Great fun to play with and the possibilities are almost endless. Not sure what I'd print though..... Out of curiosity, roughly how much does a small object cost in 'ink', take for example that adjustable wrench in the video? According to HP, an ajustable wrench costs £13 to print. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iRdkKj9beQ |
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Quoted:
How complicated is the part? Not hugely - It's a plastic block with a hole through the middle - 80mm x 20mm x 30mm ish. The existing part then has a bit of thin metal over the top with two screws holding it down. I figured that this would be incorporated into the design if it was all made of metal. |
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There's also some fairly cool open source 3D scanner projects so you can make a printable 3D model of something by scanning the original using a webcam, a laser pointer and a bit of patience! http://www.david-laserscanner.com/?section=Gallery If you have access to Kylie you could actually make a 3D model of her  |
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Quoted: I used to work with 3D scanners back in the day when it was emerging technology. The Cyberware whole body scanner was the dogs bollocks back then (scanned Arnie for T2), a massive investment in utter shit. The data clouds we got back from it were so dense that it took weeks to clean up the poly data so that it could be used with the latest software. Came in as TRi's as well, we were one of the first to start modeling in quads. I'm talking Wavefront and Alias running on Indigo 2 Extremes from Silicon Graphics. That was 25-30k for the software and 30-50k for a single computer. I still have a 75k dual proc Octain 2 sat about as a door stop, its worth £50! Those were NOT the days. Also used to do a lot of MO-CAP as well, Oxford Metrics were the guys pushing that back then, as well as VICON cameras before them. There's also some fairly cool open source 3D scanner projects so you can make a printable 3D model of something by scanning the original using a webcam, a laser pointer and a bit of patience! http://www.david-laserscanner.com/?section=Gallery If you have access to Kylie you could actually make a 3D model of her |
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Quoted:
If you have access to Kylie you could actually make a 3D model of her If I had access to Kylie, I can think of better things to do than make a 3D model of her 
Come to think of it if I had access to Kylie, I'd probably end up arrested for beastly horridness & nasty unmentionableness. But I'd have a smile on me face. |