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The 3D Un-Printer
An anonymous reader writes "3D printing is on its way toward becoming ubiquitous. Of course, if you have such a printer and want to print something, you need raw materials — the plastic filament that's fed into the machine. It's also likely that while you're learning the ropes, you'll print a bunch of terrible attempts at objects, and end up having to throw them out. Now, Wired is reporting on a device aiming to solve both of those problems. Tyler McNaney's 'Filabot' will break down failed projects as well as many other plastic items from traditional manufacturers, turning them into a filament you can then feed through a 3D printer. 'So far the plastics that work are HDPE, LDPE, ABS, NYLON. More to come on the different types that work.' McNaney sees it as a 'closed-loop recycling system on your desk.' The Filabot's Kickstarter campaign succeeded easily in 2012, and now he and his team are getting ready to launch."
For Mr. Fusion.
Why waste time with recycling when I can just convert matter to energy?
Gathering garbage to feed your maker.
That one is so easy to find from bags that it may be worth using those with this instead of throwing them away when you can't use them.
Will need to do some hacking work so this can work with HP 3d printers.
Who needs an icicle when you can just Un-Print your knife?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Matter compiler's here we come!
Reminds me of Mr. Fusion. Just grab a pile of crap from the bin and throw it in there. It'll work.
But not all at once. Or that pesky #7. Or PP. Or PE. Or PEEK. Or UHMWPE, or PTFE.
I can see this going very poorly for your average consumer very quickly.
I was under the impression that extruders to create the feed filament were still pretty expensive.
Plastic pellet feed stock is cheap industrial commodity, a lot cheaper than the plastic spools that are ready to be fed in to your 3D printer.
Hell with feeding this with bits of old plastic. If you can just feed it a bag of pellets, and it's cheap to buy, we'd have solved one of the bigger issues with DIY 3D printing.
Too messy. If you're not using your unprinter to process Soylent Green, you just aren't trying.
The Filabot has more marketing than it has engineering. The Lyman filament extruder has already surpassed the filabots noisy and slow output. Makible, makers of the soon to be $200 3D printer the Makibox (http://www.makibox.com), are releasing a 1.75mm extruder (dubbed the "ramen) that they've already demonstrated working in previous google plus hangouts. The filabot is overhyped and overplayed. They got huge funding via a kickstarter a while back and ever since then, produced a prototype machine that's on the level of the very first filament extruders the reprap project had to begin with.
Gary Hodgson has released the history of reprap development on his site: http://garyhodgson.com/reprap/reprap-developer-bookshelf/ - and if you look through the reprap ebook, you'll see people doing what the filabot is doing now....3 years ago.
This is a complete non-story that publications love to jump on, I just wish they would do their research first.
So you'll print something, then have a robotic arm remove the finished product and place it in the unprinter, where it becomes a filament that feeds back to the printer?
That's even better than the printer-paper shredder combo I've been hearing about. I suppose it will still need energy input.
Say, I've got a black box sitting here that does all that, no energy input required. Except you can't look in to see the inner works, because that would break the loop.
But it will definitely manufacture anything you can possibly imagine, then recycle it back into the stuff that dreams are made of.
You mean I could have been stockpiling all my water bottles after years of giving them away for free to the trash man?
>> 3d printing is ubiquitous
Really? Talk to me after offices start letting people print in color again...
good now all those plastic bottom sliders can be unmade.
The big difference between the Lyman and the Filabot is that shortly you'll be able to buy an assembled Filabot and have it shipped to your door.
I don't care how much more awesome a Lyman is if I have to build it myself.
"The Filabot has more marketing than it has engineering."
You just described the whole 3D printing fad. Can someone explain to me why when Don Lancaster was talking about Santa Claus machines over two decades ago, no one noticed? Ah, it was because virtual reality was on everyone's mind because VR was going to be the future!
Seriously, 20 years ago we had stepper motors, computers and hot glue guns... Why now?
I forget who, but someone made a 3d printer conceptual art project, where the printer uses wax to build something, and when its finished it melts it all and starts over, forever...
It is becoming cheaper and cheaper. When the cost is low enough, more consumers will buy and it becomes profitable.
Once people put out designs to buy for stupid things that teenagers like, it will fly off shelves. Print out your own cell phone cases or designs you can stick on your text books.
Also, you have tinkerers who will think it is fun to play with at that price.
All it will take is one killer product and everyone will start wanting one.
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I have a bag full of CDs that need to go away.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Once people put out designs to buy for stupid things that teenagers like, it will fly off shelves. Print out your own cell phone cases or designs you can stick on your text books.
Already happened: Nokia To Release Lumia Case Design Files For 3D Printers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body#Elemental_composition
If practical atomic level removal and fabrication is established, that is exactly what you would get out of the average human, though most of it is just oxygen. You still get bout 32 pounds of carbon out of the deal, so it could be useful for building yourself a couch or maybe a toilet.
Use a laser color printer that is not from HP or xerox, and you should be able to get toner cartridges cheap (assuming you recycle used toner cartridges)
Awesome, now I can melt down this drawer full of plastic spoons and forks and print me some nice sporks.
I can see the retired guys in woodworking clubs starting to play with these things for months on end and producing designs we are not capable of imagining. Take a few accumulated centuries of mucking about with woodcarving and remove a lot of the materials and fabrication limits they keep banging up against and who knows what will come out of it. That 3D printing example from the 1990s of a rook chesspiece with windows and an internal spiral staircase is just a hint of what is possible.
It's not about being stupid, it's about being able to do stuff without an industrial base because your economy has been screwed over before it built one. Building a factory to make X can be bloody hard if you need Y and Z to do it and both are coming from the other side of the world instead of from down the road (9/10s of China's success in electronics production at this point).
So what if it can only produce cheap plastic crap? The 1970s showed us that you could do a lot with cheap plastic crap. For a start about 90% of decent plumbing can be done with cheap plastic crap.
I have a few reservations, and big disclaimer here - I make 3D printer filament. The main one is that the tiniest bit of crap in your plastic will inevitably find your printer's nozzle pinhole. If it does not fit through, you will block.
The other is that the machine does not yet seem to be fully functional and they're already welding up all the pretty boxes. Priorities, guys.
Yeah just like computer-controlled sewing machines took off in the 1980s. Remember when teenagers all designed their own patches and made their own clothes? Oh right, never happened. Oooh, I know, virtual reality will totally take over and people will walk around with VR glasses and design their own surroundings! Oh wait, that never happened either. What makes you think that the majority of the population thinks like you do and wants the same things you do? We invented mass production for a reason. Because we want someone else to design the damn things we use so we don't have to spend time at them.
Only a small percentage of the population have the time, inclination, energy and money to spend on what amounts to overly-complex time-consuming ways of making disposable plastic trinkets that no one else will care about.
Of course it's ubiquitous! That's why you need, why everyone needs this doohickey that the anonymous submitter certainly isn't involved with developing or selling!
Printers actually *print* things. These are fabricators.
I hate the dumbing down of what these are, apparently so idiots can understand a term.
"Remember when teenagers all designed their own patches and made their own clothes? Oh right, never happened."
I call bullshit. Did happen lots. Still happens. Happens more the further back you go and the poorer you get. Just doesn't apply to rich white folks anymore.
VIk :v)
computer-controlled sewing has a noticeably smaller niche than 3D printing may be able to service, especially given the way that designs will be shared between users now vs in the 1980s. That said I'm not sure the idea of 3D printers in every house is viable. Most people aren't going to want to buy, maintain, understand and use it. However 3D print shops able to handle different materials, electronics etc in every town will happen (obviously in my opinion).
VR is a bit of a strawman example. VR hasn't happened yet so it's impossible to say whether it would be as big as people thought it would. If cheap, high quality VR systems were available then I'm certain we'd see more around.
Exactly! These printers could take Soylent Green to the next level from its beginnings as Boca Burgers.
If your knife is made of ABS, you can unprint it with some warm acetone, or a blowtorch. I don't think this really makes disposal of plastic murder weapons significantly easier than it already is.
Not sure how you could build a $200 3D printer. I did a BOM for my TITAN 3D printer. And I'm on about 300 euros. Just steppers and steppermotor drivers sets you back 100 euro. Leaving a 100 for hotend, rods, bearings, and all other parts...
What blood? That isn't blood, it is my red nylon filament you buffoon!
Where's the scanner capability?
Then we'd be one step closer to teleportation (of matter)
I've been buying old inkjet multifunction printers and tearing them down for the useful parts, mainly motors, steel rods, gears, wheels, encoders, glass, axels, mechanical switches, tubes, opto-switches.... lots of stuff in them, for virtually free. The gutted out printer shells themselves though are a problem, so mostly I've just cut them into relatively flat sections (with an angle grinder cut-off saw) and stacked them in a corner hoping that one day I might have something like a filabot that I can feed them into, turning 2d printers into filament which can make new 3d things.
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But I can unprint the murder weapon, make a plate and cutlery set and dine on the victim's liver with it.
well. maybe they're using 5 dollar steppers.. http://dx.com/p/28ybt-48-stepper-motor-with-uln2003-driver-dc-5v-126409
can't imagine other way to make it that cheap. (disc. I got a replicator and the reps on the rather expensive side imho for what you get..)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.