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Cheap 3D Fab Could Start an Innovation Renaissance
blackbearnh writes "An article over on O'Reilly Radar makes the argument that, just as inexpensive or free software development environments have led to a cornucopia of amazing Web and mobile applications, the plummeting cost of 3D fabrication equipment could enable myriad new physical inventions. The article was prompted by a new Kickstarter project, which if funded will attempt to produce a DIY CNC milling system for under $400. Quoting: 'We're already seeing the cool things that people have started doing with 3D fab at the higher-entry-level cost. Many of them are ending up on Kickstarter themselves, such as an iPhone 4 camera mount that was first prototyped using a 3D printer. Now I'm dying to see what we'll get when anyone can create the ideas stuck in their heads.'"
I need to apply for patent lawyer school, pronto.
"What? They want $50 for that part?? Screw that, I can make it myself for $10."
And thus, a new legal conglomeration will be formed, akin to the RIAA and MPAA, but this time to sue people for owning fabrication gear.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
+1 Informative, if only because I've never been bothered to make out what Rick Astley was mumbling between choruses.
Autocad, the only fully featured program I've ever encountered that works well with 3D manufacturing devices, is still $4,000+ dollars.
This is like the AutoCad is like the Photoshop to Gimp, in a manner of speaking. Yes you could probably find a free alternative that does what 60% of the people would use it for, but there is a reason Photoshop is still around, and a reason why both Photoshop and Autocad can charge ridiculous prices.
This is the cheapest path for a CNC and 3d printer in every home.
I have done quite a bit of research on it and it's competitors (Zen Toolworks CNC, Mantis CNC, Makerbot, Cupcake CNC) and none lead to a completed kit for this low of a price without serious time investment, trial and error, and knowledge.
twitter.com/gravitronic
To being able to 'steal' the neighbors BMW.
Finally every CS student can bring their time-honored declaration into tangibility!
It's always confirmation bias!
How long before someone creates a tiny singing mechanical Rick Astley and names the file "NakedAngelinaJolie.cnc?"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And the customized sex toy industry takes off!
Other than maybe "it's already packaged".
Search Google for "Home Made CNC". People have been making these out of OSB & plywood for a while.
Here's a pretty nice one using an off the shelf router.
Hack a day has an article from 2008.
Another.
They do require some technical knowhow. But that's about it. I think the most basic use parallel ports for IO.
As someone who works with CNC machinery on a daily basis as a manufacturing/mechanical engineer, having a cheap low cost DIY desktop CNC would be incredibly useful for home usage. However, this will be limited in it's capabilities. Cutting metals like aluminum usually requires coolant or else the material will melt and jam up inside of the flutes of the tooling. Steels can be air cut with the right carbide tooling, but I don't think this machine will have the structural rigidity required to cut steel. Generally the rule of thumb in machine design is to make your machine as heavy and rigid as possible. There is a good reason why these machines aren't cheap.
Something like this will probably be useful for cutting plastics, wood, and maybe aluminum if your willing to mount a cooling and reclamation system. Also this system will be SLOW most undoubtedly. However it will have it's uses. Cutting HDPE to make molds for silicon casting would be one, great for modelers. Precisely making printed circuit boards would also be another useful feature. Drilling wouldn't be too bad as long as the machine has enough torque. I think something like this would work well with one of the homemade 3D printers such as the MakerBot or Reprap.
I'm very curious on my end, might end up building one if I can get my boss to let me utitlize company machinery to make one.
So let me see if I understand this, the thought here is that I donate to fund their building a product they will sell?
Why in the hell would I do that?
If the plans were FREE, that might be something, if the software was FREE that might be a reason, but to me this looks like asking me to invest in their company without any possible upside for me.
It's easy enough to build a crap CNC mill, but not very useful. This one is made of wood, and the bridge isn't even cross-braced. It's not going to be stiff enough to do decent work. Just because the cutting tool is a Dremel tool doesn't mean you can skip on rigidity. Dremel used to make a drill-press rig for their tools, and it wobbled so much it was useless. And that was just drilling. In milling, you have side loads.
Little CNC mills have been around for years. Roland makes a nice little one. The usual little mill is a Sherline, and those can be equipped for CNC, although it's a retrofit. A Sherline can mill aluminum and mild steel. The MicroLux, at $499, is about as low as it gets in milling machines that can cut metal. That's not a CNC machine, but retrofits are possible.
These guys aren't the first to propose building a toy CNC mill. The Art Institute of Chicago has a little wooden CNC mill. And unlike these guys, who are peddling vaporware, the Art Institute machine exists. The Art Institute machine can be made from flat stock with a laser cutter. It can't mill hard materials, but if you're just making models of designs to look at, you can use various easy-to-mill foams, plastics, and waxes. A slightly bigger wood CNC machine is at Build Your CNC. Those are all proven designs.
Hype about CNC milling seems to be highest among people who've never used a milling machine. CNC mills are great devices, but they're not magic. The smaller machines don't cut very fast, the cutting tools are expensive, the process is messy (if you're cutting metal, you're constantly pouring coolant on the cutter, and in high-speed machines, the coolant flow is garden-hose sized), and for complex objects, clamping the work out of the way of the cutter is a hassle.
If you want to play with CNC on line, download the demo version of VCarve, which is a CAD/CAM design tool for 3-axis milling machines. VCarve will give you a sense of what you can and can't do with a 3-axis mill. VCarve can simulate the cutting process in 3D and show you what the finished part will look like. There's a really impressive solid modeling engine inside that program. VCarve (the pay version) will output the files to drive a CNC mill to make the part.
At the high end of CNC, there are 5-axis machines with tool changers, and software that can use all those features to full advantage. Watch this demo of Hypermill driving a Daishin 5-axis mill. The software package alone for that costs $20,000. The software figures out which tools to use in what order, and how much clearance is required to get the cutting head near the work. That's approaching the "replicator" level of CNC.
Now what would be interesting is to put a Dremel tool on a multi-axis robot arm, with force feedback from servomotors and Hypermill-like smarts. That would allow real 3D work, not just top-down 3-axis work. Most of the dumb 3-axis machines use steppers, so they don't know how much load is on the structure, and can't compensate for deflections under load. With servomotors, the software could compensate for some lack of rigidity.
Buy a pen-knife.
Larn to whittle.
Get off my lawn.
Its pretty cool, and written up here: http://nilno.com/
Here is an example of what happens when you have an idea stuck in your head, and you have pencil and paper at hand: YouTube - Doodling in Math Class: Infinity Elephants
And here's what happens when you have the same idea and a 3D printer on hand: Vi Hart: Blog: Entry
Just drawing stuff and 3D printing stuff because it's nifty. This is one of the places where awesome things come from.