3D Printers

[Moonliner]

This changes everything. Or at least it will.

"Printing" a wrench. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ-aWFYT_SU)

More info. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=7QP73uTJApw)

Right now these are going for $60,000. When I was in high school laser printers were wall sized devices that cost hundreds of thousands. I wanted one of my own. Now I have one that costs about a hundred bucks and prints better quality faster than those wall sized models.

Can you imagine what this will be like when we can print objects? Need a copy of your car key? Press Print. Glasses frame broke? Press Print. Need a different sized screwdriver? Press print.

This is going to keep an army of patent attorneys busy for generations.

[Alex]

Can you imagine what this will be like when we can print objects? Need a copy of your car key? Press Print. Glasses frame broke? Press Print. Need a different sized screwdriver? Press print.

Eh, we'll see. But I'm not really seeing what needs it my life it will fill. I can see it revolutionizing certain things, but not so much the household.

Even once the printers are cheap and easy, you have to have the elemental "ink" necessary to print the thing in the form you want. Unless you want everything to be made out of the same plastic. How much is an ink cartridge of "stainless steel" going to cost or "anodized aluminum" (would printing anodized aluminum be possible?). Or having the half dozen cartridges that would be necessary to print a decent omelet pan.

Again, I definitely see revolutionary impacts, I'm just not so much seeing them in the average house. One article I just read gave the example of the door braking on your 20-year-old dryer for which parts can't be found. Downloading a spec of the internet and the printing it. Apparently this less-than-wealthy health (a 20 year old dryer) has a very wide body printing machine and then, presumably, the ability to paint and finish the part just printed. (Bad examples are generally the fault of a bad salesman, not necessarily evidence of a lack of value; but still the example is really ridiculous.)

[Ghoulish Delight]

Okay, this is just getting weird. If you will indulge a slight derail of your thread for a moment...

Growing up, my family pretty religiously watched This Old House. But once Bob left and I moved away from home, I stopped watching. CP and I never watched it together. For some reason, a couple months ago, we suddenly got into it and watched a whole build, a 300 year old house in Bedford Georgia owned by a family named the "Titlows".

A couple weeks after the build ended, I noticed Nirvanaman like a link to the homeowner Joe Titlow's IMDB page. Which I thought an odd thing to like. Then I noticed...Joe Titlow is on Nirvanaman's friends list. Turns out, Joe is a good friend of Nirvanaman, they met while both worked at Ford and Nirvanaman actually visited the house in the middle of the project.

Pretty weird.

So what does this have to do with this thread? While trying to puzzle out why the hell Nirvanaman cared about Joe Titlow, we learned that Joe Titlow is a VP at ZCorp.

Why is the world suddenly revolving around Joe Titlow?!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Again, I definitely see revolutionary impacts, I'm just not so much seeing them in the average house. One article I just read gave the example of the door braking on your 20-year-old dryer for which parts can't be found. Downloading a spec of the internet and the printing it. Apparently this less-than-wealthy health (a 20 year old dryer) has a very wide body printing machine and then, presumably, the ability to paint and finish the part just printed. (Bad examples are generally the fault of a bad salesman, not necessarily evidence of a lack of value; but still the example is really ridiculous.)
Perhaps they did not mean the door itself, but a PART of the door? Like a hinger or a handle?

[Moonliner]

Eh, we'll see. But I'm not really seeing what needs it my life it will fill. I can see it revolutionizing certain things, but not so much the household.

Even once the printers are cheap and easy, you have to have the elemental "ink" necessary to print the thing in the form you want. Unless you want everything to be made out of the same plastic. How much is an ink cartridge of "stainless steel" going to cost or "anodized aluminum" (would printing anodized aluminum be possible?). Or having the half dozen cartridges that would be necessary to print a decent omelet pan.

Again, I definitely see revolutionary impacts, I'm just not so much seeing them in the average house. One article I just read gave the example of the door braking on your 20-year-old dryer for which parts can't be found. Downloading a spec of the internet and the printing it. Apparently this less-than-wealthy health (a 20 year old dryer) has a very wide body printing machine and then, presumably, the ability to paint and finish the part just printed. (Bad examples are generally the fault of a bad salesman, not necessarily evidence of a lack of value; but still the example is really ridiculous.)

Granted, this technology is new and the promise is still a long way from everyday life but it will happen.

Have you visited the Napster of the 3D printer world? Thingverse (http://www.thingiverse.com) is full of interesting ideas both simple and complex.

[Alex]

Yes, i just still don't see it coming into the average house. I'm sure it will come into many houses. But in the way that theater-style media rooms have come into many houses.

[Kevy Baby]

Now it just needs to be embraced by the same industry that has made so many other technologies successful: porn

[SzczerbiakManiac]

I like where you're going with that Kevy! :evil:

[flippyshark]

I'm just now getting into the model railroad hobby. (I turned 46. It must have triggered some latent old man hobby gene.) 3D printing could do fantastic things for model railroads. Meanwhile, it's going to cost me a couple thousand dollars (over the next year or two) just to get a modest layout going.

[Moonliner]

I'm just now getting into the model railroad hobby. (I turned 46. It must have triggered some latent old man hobby gene.) 3D printing could do fantastic things for model railroads. Meanwhile, it's going to cost me a couple thousand dollars (over the next year or two) just to get a modest layout going.

Your own 3D printer (http://store.makerbot.com/thing-o-matic-kit-mk7.html)would cost less than that.... You could make your own rails and cars..



(ok, probably not the metal rails just yet, but definitely the ties at least.)

[Cadaverous Pallor]

So many of our purchases are made of plastic. I can imagine owning a 3D printer within my lifetime.

[Alex]

The problem is that while a high percentage is made from plastic, they're not all made from the same plastic. And most of them aren't entirely plastic.

And I hope not from a certain perspective. Can you imagine the ecology of being able to just toss your nalgene water bottle when it gets empty and you'll just print a new one in the morning.

[Moonliner]

Or toss it onto the grinder on the back of the printer and recycle it yourself.

[Alex]

Yeah, but if you're home when it becomes an empty annoyance you wouldn't in the first place. It's because you don't want to carry an empty bottle home when you can easily get a new one.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Yeah, but if you're home when it becomes an empty annoyance you wouldn't in the first place. It's because you don't want to carry an empty bottle home when you can easily get a new one.But in this universe where everyone has one, wouldn't it be safe to assume you could hand it off to someone or someplace? That is, assuming there is one SuperPlastic at that point.

[RStar]

I saw a show that was looking into future tech, and they talked about printing 3D living body parts (in this case a heart). They take your stim cells, tell them to be heart cells, put them into the "ink cartridge" and printed it. This has already been tested to a degree. They printed a patern on a petri dish using live bacteria to see if they would servive the process and grow, and they did.