3D Printing: The Future Is Now

[Phanerothyme]

I do all my 3D printing at Shapeways. They print in glass, rubber, steel, silver, glazed ceramic, full colour gypsum, strong white flexible nylon, abs etc etc.

 

Is CNC as much fun as 3d printing?

 

Can you make living hinges and fully enclosed nested objects using CNC (could you use CNS to cut a hollow grid sphere inside a hollow grid sphere, for example?)

 

And you say it's expensive. It's charged by volume, the most expensive thing is obviously the silver at $20/cc and the cheapest is the colour gypsum print at $0.75/cc

 

3D printing is for one offs, prototypes, one of a kinds. And you can make stuff much more easily than you can with CNC.

 

Reprap, Makerbot, Replicator and the other one (the professionalised Reprap whatever it's called) only print in thermoplasts like abs, which is a bit limiting. On the other hand, they're a homehacker's dream. I can think of a dozen things I would have used a replicator for, instead of the usual makeshift glue/string/lollipop stick arrangements. I've found that polymorph and sugru are really good for this kind of stuff too...

 

All these comparisons with CNC ... they're different technologies, for different purposes. Although of course every 3d printer is a numerically controlled device just like a cnc lathe or inkjet printer.

 

I'd like to see someone mill one of these - http://images.shapeways.com/model/picture/640x476_36851_12139_1266949777.jpg

 

Or mill a mug out of glazed ceramic, or a figurine in glass....

[Phanerothyme]

Time will tell. It's not THAT early though, so far there are no benefits for mass-manufacturing from it, compared to existing methods. We'll see!

 

Ah you are missing the point. You don't need mass production if everyone can make their own stuff with their own printer. Of course it's limited to what it can produce, isn't everything?

 

Nobody lathes bread, or prints gravel.

 

Have a read of "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson if you want to see the natural extension of this technology.

 

I like it that the Pirate Bay now has a section for open source objects.

[Phanerothyme]

That's good, but more an example of technology than a practical method of manufacturing. That piece took "a few days" to make, whereas CNC or moulding would take hours/minutes on a mass scale.

Shapeways can print steel, and sinter it into a finished product in 24 hours. I can send them a file, and have the physical object back here within days.

 

Say I wanted to injection mold something. How much am I going to pay for the tool to do it?

 

It's all about balancing your needs against the available technology. If you need 20000 off, then look at injection moulding. If you need 3 off, then 3D printing is likely to be a good choice if your project is suitable. Of course, you can make much more complex stuff in thermoplast using a home 3d printer than you can with the worlds most expensive injection moulding machine, but nevertheless - it's horses for courses.

[PrimalJay]

I believe you can mass produce with 3D printing, imagine a room that is not just one box in the corner which dips the stuff in a vat, imagine a room where these vats are aligned next to each other kind of like troughs side by side all working in unison, you see these printers could fill a whole room like this with Line A doing one product and Line B the next and so on...

 

Just how a production line works only this production line can self build entire products by themselves without the need to pass on the product to another line to have something else added to it, this will all be done by 1 machine.

[Phanerothyme]

I believe you can mass produce with 3D printing, imagine a room that is not just one box in the corner which dips the stuff in a vat, imagine a room where these vats are aligned next to each other kind of like troughs side by side all working in unison, you see these printers could fill a whole room like this with Line A doing one product and Line B the next and so on...

 

Just how a production line works only this production line can self build entire products by themselves without the need to pass on the product to another line to have something else added to it, this will all be done by 1 machine.

 

Sure. But it's just one aspect of manufacturing - and it's really well suited to one-offs and unique designs. If you made dibbers, you wouldn't use 3D printing to mass produce them, that would be stupid. But if you needed a dibber, just one, you could design one that was absolutely perfect for your own purposes, that fitted your hand, with a depth guide and a hanging loop, in orange ABS because your eyesight isn't what it used to be - THAT is what 3d printing does best, right now.

[Likos]

Having said all that, do you think that if you told someone 20 years ago that you could message, share files and video conference with someone on the other side of the world in seconds while receiving text/video messages on your mobile phone which in fact can be used to buy products, send video messages, take photos and have apps that can operate your household appliances, you would say dream on. Even the thought of having a talking device in your car giving you directions like a satnav would have been extremely far fetched 15 years ago, these things can hit a chord and am sure some day a business on the high street will start selling these things in a shop window and the flood gates will open.

 

yes youre right.. these things can hit for sure