3D Printer Manufacturing Game Changing Technolgy?

[bobbymike]

From the Economist

http://www.economist.com/node/18114327?story_id=18114327&fsrc=scn/tw/te/rss/pe

 

[quellish]

From the Economist

http://www.economist.com/node/18114327?story_id=18114327&fsrc=scn/tw/te/rss/pe

Notably, Polecat was fabricated using these technologies.

 

[Jemiba]

"At the moment the process is possible only with certain materials ...
... in the long run it will expand the realm of industry—and imagination."

Don't know, why the well known sentence "Scotty, beam me up !" came to my mind ?

Kidding aside, yes, looking around, there are a lot objects you can use this technique for.
Your scanner jams, because a gear wheel is damaged ? Load the parts list from the scanner
and make a new one. Your car broke down, because a gear wheel is damaged ? Sorry, I don't
think, that a 3D printer will be able to produce a new one with a hardened surface, but not
hardened corpus in the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, will be great to buy for example models directly from Scott without the need for
packaging and shipment. Just download the Boeing-Lockheed Aurora II and press "print" .

 

[sublight]

Thirty years away from this being a genuine disruptive technology.

 

[robunos]

http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-thing-o-matic.html


cheers
Robin.

 

[Orionblamblam]

http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-thing-o-matic.html

That one has me tempted... but they need to do better show-and-tell on the quality and finish of the printed product before I'll plunk down the cash.

 

[Nik]

I've seen work by a sculptor who, IIRC, uses rapid-prototyping to make iron-powder filled resin models, bakes them until the resin burns off and the metal dust sinters, then dips them in molten bronze, which wicks into the interstices. Polished & buffed, the result is comparable to a classic casting. It's a lost-wax process on steroids, without the risk of cracking...

The product is tougher than you'd expect, though still short of 'engineering' quality. It might be suitable for small bearings, valves etc given a finishing stage on a lathe or mill/drill...

Okay, if you stuff the mould with wire wool before filling with the iron-powder resin, you're making progress. Electro- or flame-deposition of a tough surface film per gear-rebuilds may help, too...

Uh, I'd agree with 20~~30 year time-frame. At the moment, they're just 'rapid prototyping' widgets, which will need a couple of extra stages to reach maturity.

FWIW, such a system must be capable of outputting components 'Root 2' larger than itself so, with the exception of servos and electronics which could be re-used --within reason-- it allows you to bootstrap from desk-top to garage model in a couple of iterations...

 

[quellish]

http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-thing-o-matic.html

That one has me tempted... but they need to do better show-and-tell on the quality and finish of the printed product before I'll plunk down the cash.

I have been doing a lot of work with desktop fabrication in the past year, both using "rapid prototyping" systems like the MakerBot, and small CNC and cutting systems.
Don't ask.
The output of the Makerbot and similar systems will vary based on what you're having it do, but expect for most objects that you will need to do some finishing/sanding after it's done. The raw materials you give it also affect output. I've worked with ABS, caesin, recycled milk jugs, some other things. For my application I needed to have different materials for different scales of my objects for structural reasons.

The Makerbot is pretty cool, and you can sometimes find them on ebay for cheaper. For prototyping models it would probably work out well. http://www.thingiverse.com/ is a good place to poke around to see what people are doing with Makerbots and see what the output looks like.

As far as this being a disruptive technology..... I can see ways that it would be in the very near term, with the right business plan. Without that, I would guess about 10 years before it's evolved enough to be revolutionary. Manufacturing certain products this way - today - is cheaper than offshore manufacturing.
That is something to think about.

 

[sferrin]

They can actually do some pretty interesting things with metals as well. Several years ago I was on a project and we looked into getting a fairly large component (roughly desk sized) made out of titanium. It had a butt-load of internal cavities that would have made it all but impossible to machine, and casting was out of the question. There are several different methods for working with aerospace grade metals in a "3D printing" process. In the end the project got cancelled before we cut metal so Then, on the project I'm working on now, we wanted to rapid prototype some parts to do some assembly / movement exercises with but they wanted a fortune for them even though they were out of plastic (some of the parts were fairly large). That was a couple years ago though.

 

[saintkatanalegacy]

hmmm...

*visualizes the scratchbuilding application for whiffs*
;D

 

[RanulfC]

Couple of points since "I" have been looking hard at this for a business plan

OK, Maker-Bot and most of the other Rep-Rap based machines can only get down to around 0/1mm detail so there is still room for improvement. On the other hand having ONE maker-bot build the 'base' model and a second with CnC tools to do finishing work has been made to work.

Several of the commercial "home" machines can build things from various types of plastic and resin but they are VERY expensive, (starting around $2500, but those are "buyer-be-ware" for the most part, to $10,000+ for better machines that work in more than one material) and for the most part they use "propriatary" materials cartridges or such. Meaning even if the price of the machine seems pretty reasonable, the continued price of the materials probably WON'T be )

There is one 'desk-top' proto-typer that runs around $3000+ that can make complete WORKING engineering plastic models, (as an example shown they construct a small electric turbine-pump on the website) which looks great except that it take an entire materials kit to make each 'pump' and they don't have the prices for the materials kits on the website

No if you can design in 3D and want something made there are a couple of companies out there that will use their large scale machines to build whatever you want in whatever material you want. (Saw some REALLY impressive polyhedral dice made out of Titanium on ShapeWays... No WAY I'll be able to ever afford them though ) And there are people who have set up 'on-line' stores through those companies or Ebay, ETSI, etc, but the prices are currently rather 'high' for even flexible plastic models. Still the ability to get EXACTLY what you want is a pretty good marketing incentive despite the costs...

Randy

 

[mz]

Why buy? If there is one, it's probably rarely used all the time by the owner's own projects. This works best as a service. Naturally, it's been quite common in most businesses for years already at least over here.

Often the machine shops that have only given machining services before now also take the same computer models and make cheaper printed rapid 3d prototypes out of them that are still useful even if they have vastly lesser strength...

 

[AeroFranz]

Funny, i just came out of a presentation from a company showing their Fused deposition modeling machines (just one of the several addition manufacturing technologies).
This guy here
http://www.evektor.cz/design_and_engineering/rapid-prototyping.asp
in the Czech republic makes FDM flightworthy (although not load bearing) plastic parts (both FAA and EASA will certify those parts).

another company is printing a seat with this thermoplastic and subsequently plating it with some metal - it is being certified so it must be strong enough.

As far as more durable materials are concerned, there are machines out there doing metal sintering using lasers (SLS, I think is the term).
I don't want to get too excited about it, but this is relatively near-term technology. My company is considering buying a machine, if not for actual flightworthy parts, at least for mould making purposes.

 

[Grey Havoc]

http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/11/makerbot-class-action-lawsuit/

 

[steelpillow]

For me, the new wonder plastic is PLA - polylactic acid. It's still a bit experimental as yet but it can be injection moulded or 3-D printed, gives good surface detail, comes in opaque and clear forms, and is made from sustainable organic materials not petroleum feedstocks. I have seen photos of disposable drinking glasses that were water-clear like glass and claimed to be made of the stuff. Suitable glues are available.

I reckon the price of high-resolution 3D printers needs to come down a fair bit, and then we can all buy cheap injection-moulded kits and 3D print our whiff modifications all in the same material. I'm guessing another five to ten years, but who knows. Maybe 3D printing bureaux will take the stuff on board and deliver our custom parts for a few quid long before then.