3D Printing no longer just for Rapid Prototyping

[Elder Iptuous]

well, the hobbyist kits are pretty cheap (relatively).
they Makerbot that the fellow had at the hackerspace the other day cost him 750 for the basic kit.  he said that after buying the extra goodies and upgrades and ABS that he felt was necessary, he had a little under 2k into it, though.
It is my understanding that there are professional desktop units under 10k, and they are capable of making very nice pieces.  
my company has ordered some flight sticks, throttles, cyclics, etc. from a local rapid prototype company, and they were pretty damned slick.  they were smooth, with nice detail.  they were tough.  (i don't know how much they could really take, but you could bang them on the desk without worries, and we drop tested one that was a mess up in the model, and it didn't show any signs of damage)  My coworker who went to their facilities said they made ours on such a desktop unit, since we were only ordering one offs.  they had larger units that handled orders in the tens to hundreds.
their business cards were plastic printed.  (not really that practical since they were about 3/16 thick or so, but they made an impact in that you could read all the fine print and the logo looked nice.)  they had them in about 8 or 9 different materials with varying hardness/flexibility/opacity/etc....
after seeing this guy's hobbyist unit in motion, i'm intrigued.  i'll do some more digging and report back.

[Don Coyote]

The toughness of things made ia 3d printing can be controlled by how close the machine is told to make each pass.



Somewhere in a box in California is the shattered remains of my drink cup grabbing claw. Of which I no longer have the 3d model of. :

[Elder Iptuous]

this one's pretty cheap for hobbyist use!:
http://pp3dp.com/index.php
its a little chinese desktop type with .3mm resolution.
$2990

entry level profesional model from Z Corporation:
http://www.zcorp.com/en/Products/3D-Printers/ZPrinter-150/spage.aspx
Zprinter 150 is going for $14.9k

[Don Coyote]

Oh shit 3 grand. That is almost cheap enough for me.

[Triple Zero]

I haven't, but I'll give it a go, thanks.  I think the last time I looked at it was a couple of years ago and it was kinda dated, but I see now people are actively developing it again.

yeah it pays to revisit opensource software every now and again.

GIMP was pretty unusable when it started out as well, but is a really decent graphics package these days (not claiming it's on par with Photoshop though, but it can do most things very well).

Another opensource Word clone I tried a while ago was AbiWord. I wasn't very impressed at first, and it seems they're going the bloated OpenOffice route, but you never know, maybe they got better too. It's a much smaller download than OpenOffice, at least, which weighs about 100MB or so.

[Triple Zero]

BROKAN AI IS BACK!!!! HI BAI!

[Elder Iptuous]

Yayaya!  welcome back, BAI

[Triple Zero]

YOU CERTAINLY MEAN A MANNER MOST EXCELLENT

FEW PEOPLE HAVE FAILED WITH SUCH GRACE, SIR.

[Disco Pickle]

god this looks like a really, really horrible shoop.

but the possibility it was real makes my pance about to 'splode.

http://gizmodo.com/5678476/the-worlds-first-3d+printed-car-actually-works

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

god this looks like a really, really horrible shoop.

but the possibility it was real makes my pance about to 'splode.

http://gizmodo.com/5678476/the-worlds-first-3d+printed-car-actually-works

WOW!

[Elder Iptuous]

i wonder how much it cost them to make the car body that way.
and how much did the rest of the car cost ?
it says the part that was printed was the body and glass panels....  that makes me guess the car has a frame, not monocoque?  so it's really just a body kit that they printed, right?

[Disco Pickle]

more rapid prototyping awesomeness.

You have to sign up to view, but it's not like you have to give them real info or anything.

http://www.fortus.com/stratasys.aspx?id=8088&utm_source=ADVE&utm_medium=DEGORDONMURRAYCHECKITOUT&utm_campaign=ADVEDEGORDONMURRAYCHECKITOUT

[Cramulus]

The cats at Cornell are developing a FOOD PRINTER

http://io9.com/5717803/someday-you-will-be-able-to-print-your-own-dinner



not only that, the technology allows them to print food which couldn't actually be created by human hands!


from Cornell's page http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/node/194

Impact on Culinary Professionals: Fine Dining  

Fine dining chefs are continually developing new, innovative techniques and seeking the enabling technologies that will help them push the boundaries of culinary art. They innovate by harnessing non-traditional ingredients, such as hydrocolloids, and by employing new tools pulled straight from the scientific community; the result is "culinary magic" including flavored gelatin spheres with liquid centers, sauce foams, hot liquid deserts with flash frozen shells, syringe-extrudable meats, and much more. SFF promises to be the next important enabling technology in the fine dining realm. SFF delivers new possibilities by lending this faction of culinary artists one of SFF's core capabilities: fabrication of multi-material objects with high geometric complexity. As the barriers fall (e.g., SFF machine prices have reduced nearly an order of magnitude in the last decade) and non-traditional ingredients gain credibility in the fine dining world (e.g., hydrocolloids), the question is not whether SFF will play an important role in the future of food, but rather, in what ways will it do so. Examples of potential future applications include cakes with complex, embedded 3D letters, such that upon slicing the cake, a message is revealed. Or, even a prime rib with a hidden message. Perhaps an on-demand, customizable menu in which the dish is prepared in any 3D shape that the diner desires: the diner can co-create with the culinary artist in real-time.

Raise your hand if you can't wait to pirate a cheeseburger.

[Requia ☣]

Actually, that sounds kinda gross.  Though I expect the fast food industry will be thrilled to use them to lay off half their employees.

[Rumckle]

I dunno, the liquid meat sounds gross, but some of the other stuff sounds awesome. The desserts you could make with that could be pretty kick ass.


ETA:

Though I expect the fast food industry will be thrilled to use them to lay off half their employees.

That's pretty optimistic, I'd expect the fast food industry to be mostly replaced by vending machines.