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3d printer coming out soon, $1300 Endless possibilities
Howard_Casto:
3d printers are a fun toy, but they aren't exactly practical atm. Their biggest drawback is that they can't make anything smooth, even with that model I can see grain all over the objects. Now yeah for prototypes and such they are great, but nothing is going to beat injection molding in terms of small plastic parts.
JONTHEBOMB:
On the University of Minnesota Solar Car we are using 3-D printing for battery modules and some other stuff.
SammyWI:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on March 31, 2012, 10:27:59 pm ---3d printers are a fun toy, but they aren't exactly practical atm. Their biggest drawback is that they can't make anything smooth, even with that model I can see grain all over the objects. Now yeah for prototypes and such they are great, but nothing is going to beat injection molding in terms of small plastic parts.
--- End quote ---
There are a lot of overstatements and exaggerations, definitely. People are excited about the possibilities and others are trying to sell stuff. The shoe they show, for instance: That printer has a 5.5" cube build volume - the shoe they show seems too big to have been made on that printer. He also mentions printing a hearing aid: maybe a hearing aid housing, but the electronics are going to have to be made separately and assembled.
Smoothness is another issue. High end commercial units can print very smooth objects but they cost big bucks. For the hobbyist stuff, you can reduce the layer heights to get smoother, more detailed results but they take more time and are still limited by your equipment's capabilities. Post processing can also be done like sanding, smoothing with solvents or painting. Not quite the utopia of press a button and out pops a perfect finished product but it may be worth it for custom, one off types of things.
I for one, welcome our new 3D printing overlords! ;D
Howard_Casto:
Definately. Yeah the high-end ones can do a much better job but they are so costly and consume so much energy that they aren't really worth it.
I think the claims are pie-in-the-sky examples personally. I've seen the goop they use on the extruders and I sure wouldn't want to put anything made out of that in my ear.
I think in 10 or 15 years they are going to be just as popular as a high-end printer at your local kinkos, but I don't think in home use is going to catch on for some time. Not that it really matters, so long as you can easily get stuff printed.
RandyT:
I was impressed with the Cubify product, until I saw the price tag for consumables. $50 for a spool of ABS is nuts, if the yield ends up being a handful of smallish plastic parts per. Looks like they may be going for the "give away the razor and make money on the blades" marketing approach, and at $1300, it's still a hefty entry cost. The upside is that it looks like it will accept a standard STL file, and if they become popular, it won't take too long for someone to figure out how to refill the cartridges.
But it will be a boon for companies doing in-house prototyping. I may actually pick one up when they become available, just for that sort of thing.
*edit*
Same machine without it's clothes on? If the spools carry that much material, it might not be as bad as first thought, but the cased in ones seem a lot narrower, so....
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