For some time now pretty much everyone who’s actually smart has been talking about how 3D printing is going to be the next big thing.
It feels like it’s at the same stage the internet was in the early 90s.
So we’re about to enter the phase where vast sums will be bet and lost, and made again. All the while old industries will be torn apart and consigned to the dustbin of history.
Now the whole point of 3D printing is you can make things yourself without having to have them shipped from a factory in China.
So the money’s going to be in making the printers.
So I’m interested in what readers think can be done to get Canberra in on a piece of this pie, or if we should even bother?
[Photo by Zeusandhera CC BY 2.0]
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It’s not often I’d expect something Canberra related to highlight and emphasise technology. Particularly one that may well revolutionise the manufacturing industry- on par with mass sanitation, rather than throwing your mums p00 out the window of an evening.
(Well done RiotACt/johnboy/whomever)
This, along with ink formulation, distribution and supply; and also sintering, curing and solidification of target materials may well localise and liberate the end consumer to a degree we’ve never imagined.
It may well make a city of useless, overpaid, under-worked socialist breeding ground of unnecessary Public Servants partially worthy of their existence.
Get onto it.
nhand42 said :
Whats the real cost for something like that in canberra?
i gather most of the parts would be off the internet?
Myles Peterson said :
Forget pirating DVDs, I wanna pirate a DVD player! 🙂
you wouldn’t download a car…
I built my 3D printer last year and successfully printed another 3D printer in December.
There’s a Canberra forum on the reprap website
http://forums.reprap.org/list.php?256
You can discuss builds and parts. I’d like to organise some meets but interest has been low.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=onA-wZt3Zjk&NR=1
Reprap is kinda oldish now.
You can get the kit for about $500 to make your own. But the quality isnt there. Its kinda gimicy, the quality in terms of a dot matrix printer and the speed of one today compared to a high quality inkjet
With the professional machines (the youtube video) they are more like the fine ness of of the inkjet because they basically are.
They print out one layer at a time and then lay over a fine layer of printable power and mix it with ink like a inkjet. They cost between $10,000 – $100,000.
There was also a great XKCD http://xkcd.com/924/
I was under the impression that ANU had a very high end 3D printer that pretty much does nothing most of the day. Some guys I know who do 3D CG mentioned it a while back as they were looking at punching out some Z-Brush figurine sculpts.
If you want to know exactly how the machines work, there is a 9 minute movie on http://www.printo3d.com which shows how a small plastic goblet is made.
Get a makerbot thingomatic and off you go. It’s an amazing process to watch the more expensive ($20k plus) machines making something out of a bowl of liquid silicon.
Erg0 said :
Trust me on this: Nobody involved in software or hardware development has any fear of “the machines” taking over any time soon 🙂
matt31221 said :
Google “reprap” and you’ll know. Lots of youtube videos, too. Basically it is like an inkjet printer that heats up a plastic rod and layers it out as it cools and hardens. Although people have also used chopped up plastic milk bottles as feedstock…
As to what it can print, well the body shells for model trains like the picture on Riotact atm about Yet Another Fast Train Inquiry can be done.
So is this 3D printing a gimmick? What can it print? Metal or plastic and biggest question – how the heck does it do it?
Apparently concepts for a food printer are already in the works:
http://othersideofscience.com/2011/08/food-printer-a-revolution-in-food/
Erg0 said :
hopefully they’ll remember who their friends are.
Is anyone else concerned that we’re in the process of giving our eventual machine overlords the means to infinitely reproduce?
Hmm a memory has surfaced of reading an article in New Scientist last year about 3D printing and how they are begining to use it to make palnes and cars that aren’t restricted to the old welded metal problems. They were talking about printing into a vat of metal powder and dusting it off afterwards. aybe then i should have looked more into it.
Found it: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20737-3d-printing-the-worlds-first-printed-plane.html
They also have other articles on 3D printing as well.
Don’t we just need to buy one 3D printer, then use it to print more 3D printers?
Ah, fair cop, must be a different artist!
One of the key ideas behind the 3d printers is that you can print off a large proportion of the components so that you can make additional printers. Theoretically once a couple of people have them they won’t be hard to source. You’ll just need the metal beams, printing head, filament, stepper motors, electronics and printing surfaces.
One of the things that people fail to realise with 3d printers, is that you can make prints with moving parts, all within the single print – for example you could make a working monkey wrench, or a toy car.
3D printing is awesome. I’ve replaced a broken part in my Roomba robot from a CAD file on Thingiverse.
I think it’s more appropriate to liken 3D printing to the early days of home PCs. I’m old enought to remember that era. People would build a PC in their garage – and by build I mean circuit boards and soldering. Other people would ask what can it do, and your answer would be hmmm, not much, but you just wait.
Botmill is an example of a great cheap printer that is partially made from parts printed by a botmill. Makerbot has just come out with a new bigger print bed 3d printer which prints in two colours of ABS plastic.
An exciting technology indeed.
Aestabjoo said :
I don’t remember any of the necklaces or brooches. I do remember that he had rings that were mostly flower looking and he was explaining the process of 3D printing to me though, so maybe it was someone different.
Using the printer he discribed for anything else other then jewlery didn’t occur to me until i looked at the links other commentors have included above.