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A 3D Printer On Every Desktop?
holy_calamity writes "Two Cornell researchers have designed an open source 3D printer that costs just $2,400. The self-assembly kit is part of what they call the Fab@Home project — they hope it will spark development of rapid prototyping for the consumer market in the same way the Altair 8800 did for personal computing in seventies." Here is a video showing a completed machine constructing a silicone bulb (16-MB WMV).
Update: 01/10 04:02 GMT by KD : The developers of this kit are at Cornell, not Carnegie Mellon University as the original post erroneously stated.
Update: 01/10 04:02 GMT by KD : The developers of this kit are at Cornell, not Carnegie Mellon University as the original post erroneously stated.
A 3D Printer On Every Desktop?
I just circled my desk, and it looks like the HP Laserjet I already have exists in 3 Dimensions. Surely this means HP has beaten this other company to market.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I'd rather not download a video my computer can't even play. Can some nice person post it on youtube?
My Blog Sucks.
IP Issues to Hit Action Figure Market. Seems inevitable. Dad, can you print me a few dozen more Ninja Turtles? If it comes with a 3d scanner, kiss Barbie Good-Bye. Mattel becomes the next Sony.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Here is a video showing a completed machine constructing a silicone bulb (16M-MB WMV).
Given the ungodly expense of regular inkjet cartridges, I can only wonder how much the refills for this thing will run.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Or can you just print your own gold?
liqbase
Building and using one of these seems like a fun and even practical hobby. Ever get frustrated at the plastic parts that break and render something useless? Now you can make replacements. Ever wonder what to get for the person who has everything? Well, I'm pretty sure you could make them a lot of neat personalized things with one of these that they'll be stumped as to where you could have found them.
This project obviously has a long way to go, but I think the comparison to early personal computers could be fair, given the huge realm of possibilities creating objects in 3D space opens.
I bet they are printing a new webserver right now.
Digital Rights Management for physical objects?
I'm a robotics post grad student, and I often work on robotics hobby projects in my spare time (little of it that there is!). Something affordable like this would rock my world in so many ways. The biggest question I have is how accurate is a self-assembly kit in practice? If you're trying to build prototype mechanisms or moulds for metal with the parts, how tight are your tolerances going to be? That said, for me, if it came down to a new car or a desktop rapid prototyping machine, the rapid prototyping machine will win every single time.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
If the manufacturer's want one of these on every desktop, figure out how it will provide titillation (porn) to Joe User (and me too).
Worked for the internet, dvd players, VCR's, cable and satellite TV, etc, etc.
1. (immaterial)
2. add porn
3. profit!
Ignore anything I said above, I actually agree with everything you believe - mod accordingly.
...the "40K" in Warhammer 40K isn't US dollars.
Almost any product uses a variety of materials. The trick to using one of these machines is to reduce the number of materials needed. It is a fairly daunting challenge. Suppose that you need a toothbrush. The plastic body is easy but what about the bristles? How about a simple cooking pot? Better make that of metal. Even the simplest products are a beyond the capability of machines like this one. On the other hand, the rewards of coming up with a "Santa Claus Machine" are immense.
If someone finds a way to make these machines practical, it will completely change the world's economy. Countries like India and China will lose their cheap labor advantage. We won't have to import our consumer goods anymore. The mind boggles.
If it's possible to use these to "print" inexpensive lego pieces (within 0.005mm precision, iirc) then I am *SO* sold....
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
When I read fab I was so hoping it could print out a working circuitboard from a custom design. Don't get me wrong, this is cool too. But imagine if we could get a circuit one. Computing has already accepted open source for software, there's some effort of open source hardware designs going on. With the equivalent of this for circuits, we'd put the ability to make new electronics designs in the hands of thousands of hobbyists. Just look at all the cool stuff that hobbyists have made with software, imagine what we be invented if they had hardware as well!
Now that I think of it- the combination of that and this would be truely awesome. A talented hacker, or a small team, could design software, hardware, and test out of their own homes without expensive produciton costs. It'd be a huge breakthrough.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Buckminster Fuller wanted to give every other person a lathe, and have the first thing each of them made to be another lathe - so, buy a 3D printer and make another one for a friend :)
The fabathome wiki indicates Hod Lipson is at Cornell, and CMU's directory has no record of either researcher (which would usually be present for a year or so after leaving the university).
And I was beginning to think this would be something that would make me *proud* of my alma mater for once...
Memo to freshman Democrats in Congress: Please please tie research funding to doing useful research, and running an institution well for its students (that means a clean, consistent financial aid system and reasonable tuition), not defense and homeland stupidity pork. Your constituents will thank you.
Seems a little expensive. Could someone build one of these printers and then print the printer itself and mail it to me? I promise to duplicate it as well and give some to my friends. Seriously though, if I owned a manufacturing company of any any kind I would be scared of this thing. In 30 years you might witness the end of large scale production of small consumer goods. Throwing a party? Print up the plates and forks and chairs and tables you need. Need a gift? Print up some Barbie dolls. In 50 years the only thing that might actually be sold are the plans needed to fabricate something and the "ink" for this thing. If I was very cynical I would say this could end capitalism itself :)
Nuf said...
Surely this is just plans for a CNC goo dispensing machine? I modded a £120 manual milling machine to laser acetate, surely it's only 1 more step to attach a syringe and screw thread dispenser. Total cost £200. Seems a hell of a lot cheaper than $2500 (estimated, it's plans remember)
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
I just tried to repair the handle on a steam cleaner (it had broken in half). I don't think I could buy a replacement handle for ANY price (it's an older-model, non-industrial machine), but I could just scan and re-fab one with this machine.
/.ers, I'm continually fixing things and trying to create new tools and bins and toys in my workshop -- with a 3D printer, we can just think something up, model it, then print.
I'm also missing a foot for my laptop (it popped off at some point). Again, I could just print one in a couple of minutes...
Like most
Speaking of which, what's a good open-source CAD tool? I haven't found one yet, and I'd like to get familiar with one before these printers go mainstream.
coding is life
I don't care what else it can do, as long as it can produce a nice pair of silicone tits.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Whenever you get close to running out of material, print another cartridge.
When they get better with metals and ceramics we can kiss any sort of gun control goodbye.
You can just go to the home store and buy fabbed metals.
The only thing standing between you and a zip gun right now is a few tools, twenty bucks and a bit of knowledge. The knowledge is available on the web.
Effective gun control has always been as impossible as effective DRM. It's medieval technology for goodness sake. At heart a gun is nothing more than a tube, a pebble and something to make the pebble leave the tube really, really fast.
KFG
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I can see a nice use case for plastic surgeons in particular. Here's a sample by-line for the next issue of "Annals of Plastic Surgery" http://www.annalsplasticsurgery.com/ - this'll in nicely next to the article "Advances in Mammaplasty - Reversing the droop":
"Fancy not having to order "parts" from your local Dow Corning rep anymore? Do you desire to offer your customers truly customised b00bs in a variety of shapes? Now you can do both - and they're ready in minutes!"
Anyone who has kids knows how quickly modern toys break. Parents are also well aware of the fact that toys rarely last on the shelf for more than a season and trying to get a manufacturer to send spare parts is damn near impossible. The possibility of open source toys, or at the very least replacement parts for closed source toys, is enticing. If these things can come down to a reasonable price (they also need some advances as far as color output) I think they could become quite popular.
:)
PS A cookie to the first person who can tell me what movie the subject of my post is from.
Patents are the copyright for physical objects. DRM is a technologically enforced copy limitation. Patents and copyright are legally enforced. A technological DRM for physical objects might be some kind of shape that 3D printers are legally required to recognize and not print without a cryptographically signed token of some sort.
Hod Lipson is a professor at Cornell University, not Carnegie Mellon, and the Cornell shield is completely visible in the photo, as are the words "Cornell University."
> fab("Earl Grey, Hot");
Lemme guess - you got a liquid that was almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea.
I'm not that much of a Trek geek, I don't think, but isn't it "Tea, Earl Gray, hot"? I doubt you wanted to replicate the actual Earl...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
How does it print something like a mug where the handle doesn't loop completely back onto itself?
In the video it prints "up".. So do you simply have to print the mug and handle separately and then attach the two objects together?
Idiot, of course it didn't work!
The command is "Tea, Earl Grey, hot". Duh.
Centralization breaks the internet.
By 'just started' I mean 'earlier this afternoon', so there's really nothing there, but the current address is openmechanics.netcipia.net -- if you know of a free wiki host that doesn't require outside users to register, let me know, I'd like this to be pretty open. The registration is free, btw. At any rate, there's really nothing there but a pseudo-mission statement, but I'm eager to build the thing, so stop on by, drop an email addy and we'll get started!
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
If they put him in a miniskirt, he might then be hot...
Print the mug upside down.
Call me a cynic, but this thing hardly looks ready for primetime. In fact it looks to work far worse than 3D prototype printers I saw demonstrated 5-7 years ago did.
"Two Carnegie Mellon researchers..." translation: "Two graduate students' thesis project"
For those that didn't watch the video, it looks like a time-lapse speed up of a caterpillar building a cocoon. Seriously it has an almost creepy organic look. There is no time mark on the video so there is no indication of how long this thing took to build. The shape is brain-dead simple. Can it spin anything more complex than a circle as it builds? What good is a printer that can only make balls, cylinders, and bulbs? Presumably this item is flexible being made of silicone rubber, but that seems to be more a side effect of it being built on the cheap with off the shelf materials. It even had to be "refilled" half way through building this rather small bulb, which is mostly air to start with!
For all the people than mentioned using this device to repair things around the house, I hope the only thing that ever breaks around your house is your turkey baster (assuming this thing can print a bulb that large).
As has been mentioned by other posters, these machines will only become truly useful when they can extrude a variety of materials with a variety of material properties. I would imagine you could get a range of properties in stiffness and heat resistance by varying proportions of two or three basic plastic polymers with perhaps a few additional curing additives. Rather than demand a 100% build from scratch perhaps a few standard sized metal reinforcement parts could be thrown into the mix, though this would require a pause while the machine requested user assistance to add screws, rings, dowels, or thread a wire or two.
Really useful auto manufacturing will require serious breakthroughs in AI and robotics to assembling a variety of fabricated parts into something useful, only then will manufacturing prices plummet. Keep in mind we have had auto-milling machines for decades and they haven't obsoleted most manufacturing processes. They can also mill into custom shapes a much wider range of materials.
Letter To Iran
You're onto something important there!
The printout should be easy to recycle back into print "ink". Perhaps using temperature to melt it down. So this material would be the "draft" test printout material that you print, heat, recycle, and print again with same material. Then when you got the final printout right, you would switch to the release quality material that is more robust. Or then again, just use the printed out "draft" version to make a mold and cast release materials.
What do you think?
Tuomas
The Modela MDX-15 is only $2995.
It's not only a mill, but a 3d scanner too.
For all of you drooling over the $2400 price tag, is $600 more really so much to ask?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Nah, that will never happen.
Surgeons buy pieces from Dow because Dow has spent a lot of time and money certifying the safety of their process and parts with (among others) the FDA. Surgeons buy the parts, and don't have to be too concerned that a manufacturing defect or bad batch of materials slipped past QA. If (God forbid) QA flubs one, the surgeon can (legitimately) blame Dow. If you're doing the QA in your office, however...
While part of the (exorbitant amounts of) money spent on any sort of health care ensures that everyone involved makes a tidy profit, you are paying much more for the guarantee of safety than anything else.
In essence, silicone is cheap; the insurance and hassle involved with making a safe part is very much the antithesis of cheap.
I put together a team to do this a generation ago, using a BBS for collaboration and the first decent Mac schematic design package for software, though we were stuck with wirewrap for prototyping... but it makes a big difference even in wirewrap to have a machine-generated net list.
There are lots of companies that can take PCB artwork generated by various schematic design packages (usually Gerber format artwork) and will turn them into PCBs with an overnight turnaround if you're willing to pay for it. This is preferable because you can get them with solder masks. The price of schematic design packages have dropped quite a bit to... several in the sub-$100 range, and there are even free and/or Open Source Linux projects for this. (google is your friend)
It costs, but if your hourly rate is a positive number, one can consider them cheaper than wirewrap for any circuit of even moderate complexity.
I'd recommend for hobbyist-level projects that one accepts the size/weight penalties and use leaded through-hole components. . . otherwise, have fun and good luck dealing with soldering surface mount.
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