Shapeways visit (3D printing company)

[Hobbes]

http://www.shapeways.com/ regularly gives tours of their offices, today I visited their branch in Eindhoven. I saw their printers in action; they have a couple of SLS printers in house for their most popular material (WSF), other materials are done by subcontractors. It's almost magical: the process starts with a layer of fine powder, and suddenly a pattern appears in the powder (because an infrared laser heats the powder, fusing it together to create a layer of the printed object). Then another layer of powder is added, etc until you have a 20x20x30 box filled with powder with objects embedded in it.

Seeing the various parts of their process was fun (preparing models for printing, the printing itself, cleaning, and packaging), and the various discussions I had with their staff and other tour guests were interesting. And given the amount of time they spend on each printed object, their prices are astonishingly low.

[NARSES2]

Sounds fascinating if a little futuristic Harro, but then I am getting on a bit 

[RussC]

Some of our members on KG144BBS are actually using shapeways to create kits, especially small WW1 planes for wargaming in 144th scale. There is a Yak 36 Forger kit in the catalog of shapeways models available in 144th.
 
  Makes you wonder how long it will be before 3D printers are standard home items, and then your computer and new printer can poop model planes at the click of a mouse ? ......precolored and marked 

[GTX]

 
  Makes you wonder how long it will be before 3D printers are standard home items, and then your computer and new printer can poop model planes at the click of a mouse ? ......precolored and marked 

Desktop 3d printers are already available for home use.  Not sure of the quality though.

It might interest you to know the aerospace (and other) industry are already using advanced variants of these technologies to make real parts out of titanium etc.

Regards,

Greg

[frank2056]

Not may people pine for home injection plastic machines, so why would anyone want a home 3D printer? The process is nowhere near as easy or convenient as a regular printer. You would not only have to supply the material (expensive) for the printer, but also clean and maintain it. The printing process is also s l o w.

All this work on top of the effort required to make a 3D model printable. You then have to worry about printing orientation and support and cleaning and prepping the part after it comes out of the printer. It's far easier (and not much more expensive, all told) to upload the file to a service and get your part back in the mail, with no extra toil on your part required.

The Makerbot and RepRap home 3D printers are fine if you're making parts like gears or cases, but the resolution is atrocious. It would be like scaling the details on a 1/700 airplane to 1/24, or even worse.

The day when you can just upload a design to a home 3D printer and get a nice, smooth object out its rear end, with little more than the effort required to operate and maintain a laser or inkjet printer are decades away. 

[Aircav]

What can be done with a 3D printer and some CAD training.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/110741/message/1348148756/Updating+my+Bronco+H39+-+2012+style

[PR19_Kit]

What can be done with a 3D printer and some CAD training.

GASP! 

That's amazing, but I wonder how much the casting cost and how steep the learning curve for the software was?

[Gondor]

What can be done with a 3D printer and some CAD training.

GASP! 

That's amazing, but I wonder how much the casting cost and how steep the learning curve for the software was?

I would like to be associated with the above comment

Gondor

[NARSES2]

That's amazing 

[Mossie]

It's something I've thought about recently.  There's a bunch at work I have occasional contact with, they've taken delivery of a 3D printer, a good one.  I haven't seen any specimens yet, but I'm informed the resoloution is excellent and that it's very simple to create copies of items.

They'll be using it for research into comparative morphology of human ancestors, but I've been trying to tap them up for some time on it.  Might have to buy my own cartridges and provide cream cakes at tea break, but I'm working on it!

[famvburg]

  I love watching this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZrJsrTT4EA  Maybe one day there will be affordable desktop units!

[Hobbes]

What can be done with a 3D printer and some CAD training.

GASP! 

That's amazing, but I wonder how much the casting cost and how steep the learning curve for the software was?

Those were done on Shapeways' high-end printers, the cost is some €2,50-3,00 per cm³ so if that's an 1/35 kit you're easily talking about €50 for a sprue.

[Martin H]

So thats roughly 40 quid a sprue.

If your aiming for a best in show award, I can see why some one would spend out getting bespoke parts made via 3d printing.

[Aircav]

Wonder how's going to be the first to do a fully working 1/72 plane. 

[RussC]

That's amazing  

At the more experimental end of these machines is biologic printing, the medium in use - stem cells, the goal products - working kidneys, liver, heart, the so -called "mechanical" organs. Currently at the mice and monkeys stage.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12520951

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120621-printing-a-human-kidney

Pie in the sky/ crazy-eyed future possibles- custom bodies. Imagine a modelmakers variant, four arms with ten fingers each, cushion tuccus and overcapacity bladder for long sit-down sessions, eyes set for 80x magnify.