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I'm not calculating my time because the parts I make are for personal projects, i.e. it's a hobby.

By definition a tool used for a hobby is also a toy.

What commercial services use FDM? The one I have seen use much more expensive technologies.

One service I called was proud that their Stratasys was able to make 0.25mm layers even though a properly calibrated home-made printer can do 0.10mm layers.

That is kind of strange since the lowest cost Stratsis, the Mojo, can do 0.178mm layers. This also brings up the question of how hard is it to "properly calibrate" and how long does that celebration last? If it takes hours of setup to print one item it is a toy. Sure, if you compare low quality prints done by a hobbyist and the same prints using similar equipment by a service the hobbyist will always be cheaper. You have to pay something for not doing it yourself.
There are quite a few services that use technologies other than FDM. I was referring to companies like Shapeways and Quickparts.

I hear they print using plastic.

Some of them do. Some print in metal. Some of them print biological organs and stuff. And even some of them do it in multiple colors.

Of course then they'll run into copyright issues

I have yet to hear of a single lawsuit based on 3D parts. Even if there was, all legal precedence says that it is person ordering the part, and not the service provider, that is responsible. Otherwise Kinkos would have never existed.

so probably best just to sell the units.

Then they will likely lose to other companies that are willing to offer parts-as-a-service. Staples already has 3D-print-on-demand at a few of their stores.

> uses a laser to harden liquid plastic

ie http://www.3dsystems.com/quick... the tech that i was writing software for 20 years ago..

> you can load in any material you want.

well, sure, it just won't make anything. I mean you *could* load the machine with fucking coca cola if you wanted, but its not going to give you a part.

To actually make something you need a photosensitive resin with very precise material properties. Back in the day that stuff cost $300/litre .. i'm sure its come down a bit, but the i'll bet ya good stuff still aint cheap

What 3D printers were used in the 80s?

3D Systems was founded in 1986. Stereolithography is older than many people think it is. Early systems produced rather fragile objects, but product designers in the late 1980s were using them to make product models.

actually there are metal 3d printers. they are just not as common and generally not what many are speaking of when talking 3d printers at this point in time. I just did a quick google search and found this one fvor example http://www.3dsystems.com/3d-printers/production/spro-125-direct-metal

But this company is definitely not a patent troll, and it looks like they make great products:
http://www.3dsystems.com/personal-3d-printers
I think that they should try and settle with the startup and allow them to pay them a license fee for each printer sold. $50/printer and everyone is happy. They get to use the patent and everyone goes home happy. The guy heading the startup should just call the big company and see what they can work out.
Anything can be negotiated.
This is definitely not legal advice, it could make things way worse, and I am not a lawyer.

I suspect that if this was true, 3D Systems would have contacted them when they became aware of the potential patent violation, rather than wait until they were backed in a corner. Something tells me they wanted more of that cash than just a simple licensing agreement (or even worse, a workaround).

But this company is definitely not a patent troll, and it looks like they make great products:

http://www.3dsystems.com/personal-3d-printers

I think that they should try and settle with the startup and allow them to pay them a license fee for each printer sold. $50/printer and everyone is happy. They get to use the patent and everyone goes home happy. The guy heading the startup should just call the big company and see what they can work out.

Anything can be negotiated.

This is definitely not legal advice, it could make things way worse, and I am not a lawyer.

I'd also have to agree that *most* of the proposals for personal manufacturing don't adequetely cater to the production of miniatures. There is hope however. 3D-Micromac ( http://www.3d-micromac.com/home.html ) is currently marketing a machine capable of producing feature sizes less than 100 nanometers! Of course that's beyond the scope of the overwhelming majority of at-home-manufactureres, but the ability to produce something, anything at that scale and in your home is at least possible if you've got the cash. I'm obviously less optimistic that the price of such a machine will become affordable for the average Joe based on the fact that Joe currently has no need for that capability. I would argue that it's at least reasonable, however, that your desire to produce detailed miniatures is on the horizon. I used to design for Johnson & Johnson where we constantly concepted parts for medical instruments utilizing "lost wax" prototyping techniques for extremely small parts. Utilizing InVision "wax printers" ( http://www.3dsystems.com/products/projet/library.asp - gallery ), we could produce amazing molds which were then used to cast functional parts for validation. The process is not at all dissimilar to the creation of detailed miniatures and figurines. Typically in your application, an artist will carve an original which is cast in urethane (or some other compliant material). From that cast, a mold is made to produce multiple copies. Even if the production is extremely limited, this is the standard method because no other technique is as feasible. Essentially your application is highly specialized but I have no doubt that one day your desire to produce miniatures will be posssible and affordable @ home given the current rate of technological advancement and market demand.

Anything with a laser is much more expensive (with fewer material options) than what's being discussed here. You are referring to a Stereolithographic process, primarily commercialized by 3D Systems, Inc.. This group uses more of a heated extrusion, similar to the Fused Deposition Molding process used by Stratasys, Inc. Even the liquid resins, though, have limits to degree of overhang permitted before the cured material will sag or fall in.

That said, there are likely a lot of things you could do with room temperature epoxies and investment casting, and cheaper modelers for those casts. Cheaper, though, still means typically $10k or more. And even then, the raw materials aren't cheap.

So, how to bring things down? How about the Fab@home project? Nothing like open source 3D fab. I think the current cost estimate to build the tool is about $2500. I'm surprised every engineering school hasn't set their undergrads to work to make something like that (as a useful project, a teaching tool, and a development platform). The material set is a bit limited at present, but really guys, they've demonstrated Chocolate!! what more could you want? :)

VR is cool but don't forget that you can get a similar rapid prototype benefit from 3D printers.

Tha printer isn't actually 3D, it only has 2 axis and the chocolate is only one layer thick.

Although there are plenty of actual 3D printers.

w00t, my first post using DVORAK.

Google first, post later.

My friend has a mini cnc machine from MAXNC here in Arizona. He makes rc parts for cars, helicopters, etc... I got interested in it (although I still don't have the money to buy one) and did some research into the various cnc processes. Go to 3D Systems, you will see they have SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) which allows you to make stuff with A6 steel. And 3d printers for other stuff.

So the technology is available now. Not cheap, but is it here.

An associate of mine runs a small factory in Japan where they make 3d-printers, much of the technology is from Texas-based DTM. Can't find their homepage, I think they might be owned or were by BFGoodrich. Many companies use their Sinterstation, which uses a laser to fuse nylon or metal powder deposited in thin layers inside the production bay.

The machines are I believe in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each but they are used to make prototypes like mobile phone shells, or molds as for experimental automotive parts.

Anyway nylon is easy, but they also have a rapidsteel process and the holy grail I understand is titanium, which would allow you to create surgical implants like joint replacements. As you can see in the link above, you can already pretty easily produce a 3d model of your skull from Cat-scan tomography. I've only seen plastic versions, though they might be more appropriate to trying to mimic x-ray backscatter from bone, and much cheaper than going through the trouble of making a mold, pouring metal, and finishing it. Hospitals are probably a lot easier to penetrate than these biometric systems. Come to think of it, you could skip the biometric penetration and just use anthropological techniques to build a face over the skull based on known data about skin depth at different parts of the skull. Painting surface features based on a pictures taken with a telephoto lens would also be cheap compared to the price tag mentioned in this thread for biometric analysis equipment.

Actually I think /. is a great place to get advice on how. The real problem is getting advice on what.
Might I suggest two general approaches?
First of all, talk to actual customers in fields where they spend money on this sort of thing. Use a group like the American Institute of Architects or the American Society of Mechanical Engineers to reach the people who actually *do* flythroughs and renderings and see what they want from such a product. You may also find that talking to folk at a second-string engineering school (Stevens or RPI rather than MIT or CMU) you'll be able to get plenty of eager beta testers as unlike the more famous places, they don't get as many offers but they've got plenty of brains.
A variation on that would be to check out reviews of products in magazines like Architectural Record, and further, write to the relevant editors (not phone, you want to make it clear that you weren't just bored and calling on a lazy whim) and see what they've got to say.
This page will give you a solid start on relevant organizations and variables.
Secondly, the current situation of having to use five different programs to finish the job is a little silly. I continue to be amazed by the frequency with which I hear somebody say that they do the sketching on paper or with something like Illustrator, then do the technical work in something like AutoCAD, drop in some people from Poser, then export to something like Maya, fix the resulting problems and render there, and then do final changes in Photoshop. Meanwhile stereolithography outputting is moved to something like Lightyear or Buildstation.
Might I suggest a rigorous NURBS implementation with an intuitive basic functionality such that an item can be rough generated with a PowerGlove/Glasstron UI and make it all the way through the process right to render, animation, and outputting of models. I know that it's a lot to ask but, hey, you *said* that you were ambitious. In fact, I suspect that if you can do a system such that you sell a $50 crippleware version through places like Download.com and the serious version elsewhere, you'ld be able to build your user set quickly and also get to market faster.
A side note is that the ability to generate objects for systems like Adobe Atmospherewould finalize the build once-use many times paradigm that I'm talking about. After all, how much overlap is there between these communities? I'ld say considerable, and if gamers can then use the objects they created for one part of their lives in another, they'll be happy campers.
Best of luck to you,
Rustin (former techie for Sweets, Arch. Record, Design-Build, This Old House, Index, Woodworker, etc.)

They make solid-object printers... they have a couple of competitors, but I can't remember their names off-hand.