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.'"

Comments

Excuse me, but..

[DoofusOfDeath]

I need to apply for patent lawyer school, pronto.

That, or...

[DWMorse]

"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.

Re:That, or...

[Overzeetop]

Not until they start trading commercially developed CNC path programs for the parts.

Anyone can make their own music and movies, it just turns out that you get a much more polished product that doesn't take dozens or hundreds (or more) hours of your own time.

The question will be come whether sharing or selling the digital reverse-engineered program you feed to your 3D printer is legal. Physical items are generally not copyrightable, and I believe selling copies of patents (which describe HOW to make an item) is also legal. Now, if a CNC path is simply a set of descriptive data describing a physical object, it may also fall outside of a "creative work." That kind of stuff should clog the courts for a while...if this every takes off. How many people are going to drop $400 and several hundred hours of time to make personal replacement parts?

Re:That, or...

[KublaiKhan]

The path may well be counted as IP and, hence, licensable. CNC programmers (I used to work at an aerospace parts manufacturer, hence why I know this tidbit) can create the same part in many different ways, depending on how fast or how efficient they want the process to be.

So while a model file showing all the dimensions of a part may be freely tradeable, the machine path required to build that part in the least time or least material may well be copyrightable under current laws.

O'course, it could always be counted as a trade secret, but that's another kettle of beans altogether.

Re:That, or...

[mspohr]

I have an immediate need for two small plastic parts for my car front bumper which spray water on the headlights. They have broken off over the years due to encounters with snowbanks, etc. Dealer wants $110 EACH for them but they look like they cost about $1 to make. I'd love to make my own.

Re:That, or...

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

If you posted on the reprap forums very likely you could find someone in your area with the means to print objects in 3D.

Re:That, or...

[TheKidWho]

Assuming he is referring to the injection nozzles, I doubt it you can make a quality part on a reprap. You can probably make ones that work, but they wouldn't be any good IMO.

Re:That, or...

[ColdWetDog]

Yeah, and even with this widget you would need to

1. Find the 3D representation of the little plastic part or
2. Create the 3D representation of the little plastic part
4. Find something on the order of the correct plastic - since it was likely a mass molded part in the first place, you would have to find a plastic that had something similar to the mechanical properties of the original but was machinable
5.Set up your machine
6. Run the parts through the cycle a few times (or a hundred times depending how good a machinist your are or are not)
7.Shut the machine down, clean up, install part
8. Repeat the whole cycle when you figure out you neglected to add the little plastic tab that broke off in the first place thus starting this whole commotion.

Just buy the damn part or use duct tape... People have had DIY 3 axis machines for years with CNC capability (See weird w's post above). Sherline Tools sells the canonical setup. Cost you about $1000 but you will spend many more hours and dollars learning how to use it. Even with CNC, there is an art to figuring out how to cut something complex out of a block of material.

So I don't think bringing the costs down to $400 is going to make much of a difference. It will still take lots of time and effort and the couple of hundred dollars a dremel tool based rig is going to save isn't going to get you anywhere.

Re:That, or...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It is eminently possible that really widespread 3d printing(unlike novelty prototype stuff where the copies are worse and more expensive than the real thing) would simply lead to a change in the law to "address the problem". In this case, for instance, the proposal was advanced to create an entirely new form of "intellectual property" consisting of the shape of boat hulls, because it was trivial for company B to copy company A's design just by buying one, taking an impression, and then producing as many fiberglass copies as they could sell.

If memory serves, something similar was done for IC masks, and in the EU certain geographic regions now have a novel form of quasi-trademark status, not belonging to a company or person; but to a place(ie. Heinz inc. or licensees are the only ones who can see 'Heinz brand catsup'; but anybody can market sparkling wine as 'champagne' IFF it was produced in Champagne, and under no circumstances otherwise.)

I would assume that truly practical 3D printing would draw the fire of incumbents, much the same way that VCRs, MP3s, etc. did, as soon as they become economically viable. It will also be interesting to see if there is some "hardware DMCA" blocking the reproduction of parts that incorporate 'anti-reproduction-technology like microdots or GUID RFIDs or the like'...

Re:That, or...

[ColdWetDog]

The current technology allows anybody with a couple of grand and a fair bit of time build fairly complex stuff. The major impediment is a rather limited set of materials that are 'easy' to work with. Using other materials (like Stainless Steel) takes much more work).

I don't think you will see devices that can scan a complex object and then 'print it out' without much in the way of user knowledge and intervention. The actual machining aspect is only a small part of this. For your application, there are a bunch of devices that can do the job today. Heck, you can even upload your designs to a number of small run fab shops for very reasonable prices.

Extruder technology is going to be limited to stuff that you can melt or liquify. I doubt anybody has extrudable aluminum as of yet.

Re:That, or...

[caution live frogs]

I work in a research hospital. I recently had a conversation with our in-house shop guy, while he was doing a 3D build of a prototype part for me. He said this is a huge friggin' deal for people in the industry. He has had his finger on the pulse of this for quite some time now, and the big companies are very definitely worried about this. Right now, he can make anything he wants, and the only major issue is cost of materials. In the future, especially when metal forming rather than plastic is more easily done, who knows? His take is that the commercial-size 3D printers are quite likely going to come complete with DRM systems that will check specs and refuse to print anything that matches certain database flags. He doesn't like this, but he sees it on the horizon. As it is now, it's cheaper for us to do prototyping and then have a manufacturer mass-produce the part we designed; it won't be too much longer before it's just as cheap and fast to do it in-house. Manufacturers are worried. They won't sit idly by and let it happen without a huge fight.

Re:FRIDAY!

[rwa2]

+1 Informative, if only because I've never been bothered to make out what Rick Astley was mumbling between choruses.

Please support this project!

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

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.

Re:One problem

[ChefInnocent]

You're thinking all wrong man. I own a "vinyl cutter" (Wishblade) that came with some great software. I can do just about anything I want with it. I've made tons of stencils for cakes, woodworking, fabric patterns and other stuff for people. I can scan an image and have it on the cutter in minutes. There's a problem with it. It takes time to learn. It took me about a day to learn and I'm technically adept. My roommate, it would take her a long time to learn. She's been watching me make stuff for a year, and wouldn't know where to begin. She bought a machine which does something similar, but is far more limited. She bought a Cricut. She has made more stuff in the 3 weeks she's had it, than I have all year with mine because it is so easy for her to make stuff. The Cricut is not versatile. It is not cheaper than the Wishblade. It doesn't do half the cool stuff I can do. But she learned it in just a few minutes.

Wishblade made a very nice product, and they will get to sell me overpriced cutting blades at $20 a pop. Cricut will not only sell their blades at $20 a pop, but you have to buy "fonts" to make it work at $20-$100 a pop. Her friends own about a dozen font cartridges each. Her friends don't need to buy expensive software or even own a PC. They just own a Cricut which holds their hand so they don't have to do any thinking outside the box.

I'm trying to figure out how to make a 3d fab machine that takes font cartridges I can sell bajillions of. As a person very capable of doing stuff, I love the Wishblade over the Cricut every day of the week. But there is far more profit selling the Cricut. Photoshop is awesome, but when half the population doesn't understand MS Paint, your aren't going to sell to many copies of Photoshop.

Customized!

[boristdog]

And the customized sex toy industry takes off!

Nothing New

[0100010001010011]

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.

Desktop CNC

[TheKidWho]

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.

Re:Desktop CNC

[wierd_w]

Good luck with the latter... Machine time is expensive. :(

Personally, I'd use this to make specialty cabinets. Simple 3-axis is all you need, and if you keep the spindle speed down, wood does not need coolant.

For a coolant "enhancement" though, you could add another opcode to the G-program to turn on essentially an aftermarket watergarden fountain pump, and mount the machine over something like a bathtub. That way you could turn on coolant for soft metals like aluminum and copper.

Mild steel would be OK with the right cutters, but anything in the hard steel category would most certainly be outside the cutting abilities of the proposed spindle for this DIY kit. (Prototype specs a dremel tool.) You would just need to sacrifice speed for utility by turning up the spindle speed and radically reducing the depth of cut.

Granted, that would RADICALLY shorten tool life-- and cutters aren't cheap.

Crap CNC machines

[Animats]

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.

Re:So let me get this straight

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

You have it wrong.

You pledge to support X dollars. Depending on your pledge, if the funding reaches it's goal, you get the CNC. If the funding doesn't reach it's goal, you pay nothing.

So you decide what you want (just the plans, the electronics, the entire kit, or a preassembled unit), pledge the right number of $ and select your reward.

You aren't giving them money for nothing. Consider it a preorder system where you don't have to pay unless they get enough orders.

Example

[pgn674]

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.