/johnny
Perhaps, one of these days, I can have 2 kidneys again. Not sure if I want the spleen back, we never talked anyway.
/johnny
-PJ
The open source printer that is self replicating so you can give one to a friend.
http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
I’m printing an M1A1 Abrams tank. But the printer cartridges are getting a little pricey.
... or even the Urbee, a prototype car
I’ll take a 1960 something Vette with all the extras
3-D printer ping
Fasteners are not obsolete because you’ll still want to disassemble certain components for maintenance.
This 3-D printing will in a little while morph into something called an assembler.
They will come in small desktop models to large mobile models that build homes/bridges/whatever
Just about all you really need to build large structures like homes is lots of sand, an assembler and plenty of energy.
Assemblers will one day be able to create drugs, food, clothes, electronic devices, tools .... and new assemblers.
Progressives (communists) will NOT like this tech at all! How can you rule over a populace that does not need anything from government!?!?
Printable Houses and the Future Opportunity Therein
http://www.wfs.org/content/printable-houses-and-future-opportunity-therein
In Denmark, a printable house
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/design-architecture/in-denmark-a-printable-house/6130
Printable houses are coming
http://www.kurzweilai.net/printable-houses-are-coming
Students 3D print a boat from milk jugs — are jetliners next?
http://gcn.com/articles/2012/07/31/3d-printing-milk-jug-boats-to-airliners.aspx
That is one big may.
3-D printing supports a limited variety of rigid and flexible thermoplastics and some (but not all) powdered metals. Its strong feature is the ability to create a near net shape part with no tooling. What I would call show and tell models for marketing meetings.
The process is inherently slow as it builds the part at a rate determined by the laser spot diameter and the melting point of the material. When using powdered metal the process slows down because of the higher melting point of metals requires the laser to dwell longer to insure fusion.
Conventional powdered metal production puts the powder in a die, presses it to near net shape, and sinters it in a furnace with a reducing atmosphere. This produces a strong metal matrix which is porous. If your part needs to be completely solid you pass them back through the hydrogen atmosphere furnace with a small copper block in contact with the sintered part. The copper melts, capillary attraction sucks the copper in and brazes the part into a solid piece. You'll note that the conventional PM process can produce hundreds of parts at a time with the only tooling being a pressing die, whereas the 3-D printer builds one part a few molecules at a time.
Another aspect of the 3-D printing process is the selection of materials suitable for fabrication is limited. If you are working with electric motors and such you need materials that can be magnetized and demagnetized rapidly. If you are designing gear trains you'll need materials that are heat treatable. Some parts need to be hard all the way through. Some parts need a hard surface for a few ten thousandths and a relatively softer core for impact strength. &c. &c. &c.
In sum, 3-D printers will be useful for producing tooling (dies, master patterns, core boxes). This will speed up the prototype development process while permitting final tweaking of a design while avoiding major expense in production tooling early in the design cycle.
Regards,
GtG
Remember the 1950’s sci-fi classic “Forbidden Planet”?
And the story of the lost civilization, “the Krell”?
And, before the overnight collapse of their world, the gigantic “machine” that they had been working on?
That could “create matter” of any shape, anywhere, at the mere will of an individual...?
This is going to be fun. My entire life I’ve been on the cutting edge of technology. I’m easily bored and have job hopped all my life. I hope you young people can experience the same, I had fun.
I was working for a tool and die company in the early 70s when some old fart walks in and wants to tie silicon wafers together to make solar cells. Next time I see the guy he has a sign on his car that says Arco Solar.
Then I go to work for a company that is making hard drives for Lawrence Livermore. These things are over 12 inches in diameter.
Next, I go to work for Xerox. We have Colt 45s on our drafting tables, anti-tank guns, TOW anti-tank weapons, we are climbing over tanks and placing lasers in everything to create laser tag for the military. We put a plywood tank up on our rooftop in Pasadena and shot it from the shopping center next door. The place was immediately surrounded by police.
Then I go to work for a company that makes air-born printers. I would later go back to work for this company making some of the first desktop printers.
I made a mistake in turning down a job at JPL because I had an opportunity to design one of the first desktop computers because it paid more. 20 years later when applying for another job there, they remembered me and I wasn’t hired.
I worked on laser guidance systems, hill-top command centers, navy ships, satellites, fighter jets and transports. I worked on the camera that films fighter jets bombing their targets. I had a job where we doubled the speed of making fiber optic filaments.
I worked on tank and truck simulators for the military that got me into working for the entertainment industry designing special effects for places like Iwerks, Disney and Universal Studios.
I bought my first computer in something like 1985 (?), a Timex Sinclair. We wrote our own programs and stored them on cassette tapes. I built my first computer in 1988 for $3,500. I bought the parts at a computer swap meet. At that time, I was working for a military contractor and they had just gotten into Computer Aided Design (CAD). We weren’t allowed to learn CAD because we, being American men were not suited to sitting behind a computer screen. The jobs were given to women and Asian men.
Eventually, a company I worked with gave me a class in CAD. There were no public schools offering classes. After getting fired from that job I BSed my way into a CAD job where I didn’t even know how to turn the computer on. In this job we worked 12 hour shifts. I would leave and someone else would take over. We were all supportive of each other, sharing knowledge, teaching each other. That is the important part to this, sharing technology.
We were moved as a group 20 miles north where we were supposed to receive our input from the women and Asians working on the mainframe CAD computers to do our drawings. We kicked ass and the desktop computer became king. We were after all, designers and engineers before computers came along.
In the early 90s, I couldn’t find anyone interested in the internet, no one at the computer swap meets and no one in computer clubs. Eventually I found someone giving away free classes.
With all the obstacles in our way, all the major players as portrayed in this article. For some reason they were all trying to stifle our yearn for learning. It will not be the major players in this game. It will not be NASA, Germany, Boeing, Siemens, General Electric, Samsung, Canon and Daimler. It will be the hackers, people with a thirst for learning. It is the hackers with open source projects that are making this a viable new opportunity.
The new kids on the block with their college degrees will be protecting their intellect while us hackers will be sharing and growing. Most of the files, the parts to be printed, used for 3D printing are still free on the internet. The plans for building the 3D printers are open source. You can buy the circuit boards from people that build them using open source specs. The software is open source. Even Autocad, a company that gained dominance in the CAD industry because we could bootleg their software, is giving away their 3D software for free, like 123D Design. How cool would it be to have a family portrait in the form of a bronze statuette? Or that of a pet?
Last weekend I visited Deezmaker in Pasadena just to see these 3D printers. I’m sold. There will be one in everyone’s home. They are no larger than a regular printer and they don’t smell as I had thought they would. These printers were all busily printing, so I asked the guy what he was printing. He said “more printers”.
Everyone will have a 3D printer in their home. It will be limited to plastic parts, but printshops will open up where you can print that statuette in bronze or a new tail light for 5 dollars. The tax man and those guys in China will be ticked.
I’ll be buying one next month for $500 from Solidoodle and it is a two month waiting period. At Deezmaker, he had a two head unit that could print in two colors for $1200.