This is insane! What next?

[SignosaurusRex]

I got the link from my brother who witnessed that thing in action at a facility where one of his buddies here in the Seattle area is employed. They use it for production of an incredibly wide range of components. While visiting my son this evening at the hospital I happen to pick up the February 12th 2011 issue of The Economist magazine which featured a cover article about this very process. Some variations of this printer employ metallic dusts and a tightly focused beam. The impact of this technology is absolutely astounding and very scary to say the least, with far reaching implications not just for jobs and the distribution of capital, but also for Intellectual Property rules which already has attorneys licking their chops and rubbing their hands. It is sure to disrupt every field it touches on an astronomical scale.

 

[GypsyGraphics]

this is great, all i have to do is buy one of those, press a button, print myself a crescent wrench and then go into business as a theoretical physicist.

 

[hightop]

this is great, all i have to do is buy one of those, press a button, print myself a crescent wrench and then go into business as a theoretical physicist.

 

[signmeup]

Bit miss-leading. The part they produced is different than the part they scanned. I wonder how much work they did in the cad program before they hit print. Quite a bit I'd say. I'd like a scanner that did both sides of a part at once and determined the inner workings automatically and deleted details that were not needed and added a handy hanging ring...

Still... it seems to make a nice part.

 

[10sacer]

You can't run down to your local Ace Hardware if your $1 crescent wrench breaks or floats away way up in the space station. How cool to just print out a new one...

Of course, maybe we don't have a legitimate space program anymore...

As far as the inner workings - my buddy does patent drafting and he does about 10 - 15 perspective views of everything he touches - including the inner workings, so I guess you could just export those from his CAD program into the 3D printer CAD program and get your working internals. Don't get me wrong - there would still be a lot of front end CAD work, but the possibilities are astounding.

 

[Locals Find!]

Imagine if Home Depot had one of these with all the nuts, bolts and basic tools pre-programmed in. They could have a simple kiosk to buy your tools. No more stocking shelves.

You want a wrench push a button on a touch screen swipe your credit card and wait for your wrench. Now, that would be progress.

 

[rfulford]

This machine looks like one of Zcorp's units. The models that come off these machines have a ceramic feel to them and they are really brittle. We did a 90 demo on one of these machines about 8 years ago. Back then, it was a relatively cheap machine with expensive consumables. Sound familiar? The advantage ZCorp has over other 3d printing companies is the ability to incorporate color. Essentially, the machine is better for model making than prototyping. There are better machines out there if you want to get into prototyping.

 

[Pat Whatley]

Imagine if Home Depot had one of these with all the nuts, bolts and basic tools pre-programmed in. They could have a simple kiosk to buy your tools. No more stocking shelves.

You want a wrench push a button on a touch screen swipe your credit card and wait for your wrench. Now, that would be progress.

Back before Napster destroyed all the record stores Blockbuster had plans to do something similar. They were going to have digital kiosk franchises anywhere somebody wanted to stick one. The kiosk would download any album, burn it, print the cd, and print the CD case. 4 square feet of floor space would have replaced an entire record store.

 

[petepaz]

could they scan me and print an extra person so i don't have to work so late


that is pretty cool. i have a customer who has a machine that makes prototype parts makes them out of plastic. didn't get to see it work yet so i am not sure exactly how it works but they showed me some pretty crazy stuff (they made an actual working model of a bicycle, about 6in tall)