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How 3D Printers Went Mainstream After Decades In Obscurity

Posted by Soulskill on from the marketing-and-a-modicum-of-user-friendliness dept.

An anonymous reader writes: By now, everyone knows the likes of MakerBot, Bre Pettis, and the gun-printing cage rattlers at Defense Distributed. But the tale of 3D-printing goes all the way back to the heady pre-Macintosh days of 1983, and a simple plastic cup holds the distinction of being the first-ever 3D-printed object. Garage entrepreneur Chuck Hull managed to print it using cobbled-together hardware that looked like something out of Waterworld, laying the fragile plastic framework for everything to come. From retrofitted hot glue guns, to a machine made specifically to print on-demand shot glasses, the last 30 years in 3D printing have been full of strange twists, odd characters and melted failures. And the possibilities are just beginning to emerge now that anyone can play.

17 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. 3d printing is legit by bhcompy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Used to get plastic printed trains at Griffith Park when I was kid. Now, I can make my own plastic printed train. I'm so happy you have no idea

    1. Re:3d printing is legit by sconeu · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think those were injection molded.

      You put your money in, it shot plastic into a mold. When it cooled, it popped out of the slot.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    2. Re:3d printing is legit by chaosdivine69 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can also print out little toy solders for your kids if you have them. Why stop there? Need a certain Lego part for that extra special project? Model and print your own.

  2. 3D plotter by ledow · · Score: 2

    Still a long way to go - they are still just a toy.

    Bought one for the school I work for, and it's cool to watch but it has a LOT of problems, not inherent to the implementation.

    When people ask how it works, I explain to those old enough to remember pen-plotters that it's just one of those, with melted plastic and a vertically-moving surface. They nod and then realise that we could have done this decades ago with any number of other materials and got something similar. And we actually did, and have done.

    The process has a long way to go - plastic is a nicer material than some home-brew thing could made, but it's still having problems. Cleaning supports and struts is a pain - I understand if you have a completely "floating" support that they are necessary but in, say, a teacup the whole thing is joined to every other point so there's no real reason to require supports. Moving up AND down a level and being able to orient the head would help a lot here and solve some other problems.

    The layering produces obvious stripes. If you print circles, inevitably you have to adjust the print movement or else you end up with a "seam" where the head completes the circles and moves up a level. It's very hard to 3D print, say, a watertight object - even with the best preparation it's hard to guarantee the material will stick to the print-base, and that it will join to itself perfectly.

    And print time is still atrocious. All things that will get better, I'm sure, but given that it's a plotter with a vertical base, you have to wonder why the speed isn't anywhere near the best plotters as were around 20-30 years ago.

    1. Re:3D plotter by Smidge204 · · Score: 2

      What kind of machine is it?

      I agree a teacup should not require support, unless the handle has a loop that dips below the attachment point. But even then only the underside of that loop would need support.

      The layering can leave stripes, but a nice material with good print settings on a well made and tuned machine it's more of a texture than actual visual artifacts. They're like grooves on a record; you can feel the individual grooves but unless you look closely or get the light at just the right angle it just appears as a matte finish.

      I've only printed an object intended to be liquid tight once, and it worked fine. Again, it comes down to print settings, calibration and good quality material.

      So in the interest of improving your 3D printing experience, I'd like to know what machine you have, what material you use and what the settings are.

      As for speed, that's also generally a limit of the material... but I've gotten mine up to ~230mm/sec before the heater in the nozzle couldn't provide enough power to melt the filament at that rate.

      In practice you have a lot of moving mass which limits your top speeds on complex parts - the forces from accelerations can overwhelm the cheap belt drive systems most hobby-level printers use. Of course, if you want to shell out for better parts you can make something a lot better :)
      =Smidge=

  3. How it happened? Easy: PATENTS expired. by HeckRuler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Their patents expired. It was hip new technology in the 1980's with a lot of industrial researchers making exciting new tools and generally doing what patents encourage.

    But there was only niche use for it, and the cost of all the overlapping patents stifled the market for 30 years. You couldn't sell a 3D printer without paying homage (and a fuckton of cash) to the inventors back in the 80's.

    Those patents are expiring and now making, selling, and operating 3D printers is economically viable for the general populace and not just niche tool shops with a big wad of cash. Without the burden that those patents created, the technology was allowed to go mainstream.

    Kinda makes you wonder if existence of patents are such a good idea in the first place.

    I thought this was common knowledge.

    1. Re:How it happened? Easy: PATENTS expired. by sehlat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except no ONE person invented it. 3D printing was the result of a lot of researchers working on a lot of parts, and when the dust settled, none of them could build a really practical printer without paying off all the other patent holders, most of whom were playing dog-in-the-manger with their patents while trying to elbow out the competition.

      Anybody remember that scene in "A Beautiful Mind" where Nash points out that if everybody goes after the beautiful girl they block each other and nobody gets the girl? Patents on complicated devices are like that. Everybody ends up blocking everybody else and nobody can do much with the technology until the patents expire.

    2. Re:How it happened? Easy: PATENTS expired. by taharvey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Watching this space, what I think is interesting is how the open source community has helped proliferate the technology, the result has been an explosion of a very wide but shallow market (lots of companies each with a handful of not very perfected features, each with only a few customers). However only in the last year have those products been refined into printers that could be consider something that may make it into consumers hands.

      It is a replay of the 1970 computer hobbyist scene. We are waiting for a few companies like an Apple, Microsoft or IBM to narrow the market again and get deeper penetration. This isn't a bad thing, as the expectations congeal around a minimum feature set (multicolor, automatic dissolvable scaffolding, WYSIWYG software, variable resolution to improve speeds, improved detail using feed-back loops, etc), only a few companies will be able to compete with the kind of hit-a-button-and-get-a-perfect-print-everytime experience that will take this from a garage experiment to a practical user experience. Those companies will get more mindshare, and be able to sell deeper into the market at a mass-produced price point.

      Still most of the printer has pretty variable results. It turns out it takes a while to perfect the little details. It is the normal arc of technology, not just patents expiring.

  4. So were tablets by peragrin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Newton message pad? heck even touch styles have been around since the 70's

    The base technology is just starting to catch up with the dreamers. Microsoft was promoting tablet edition windows XP in 2002. It took until 2010 until the tech caught up to the promise(and even then it still has a lot of things to improve on.

    Quad copters have been built and flown since the 1930's but the tech was always just lacking. it took computers to create fine enough controls to stabilize the flights enough to be practical. In coming Decades we are going to look back at the various flying machines of the 1950's and 1960's and build them with new tech. The base ideas are the same it is the material science, sensor designs, small enough transistors that has drastically improved to make old ideas practical.

    Look at the V-22 Osprey. That machine literally couldn't fly in the 1980's they couldn't quite get it to work. It took 15 years of additional refinement to make it practical.

    3D printers aren't quite there yet. the material science is still working on it. But it is a good start.

    --
    i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    1. Re:So were tablets by JimSadler · · Score: 2

      The Osprey is not practical at all. It is simply a machine designed for a special task which copters can not do. It offers a bit more range than a copter combined with the ability to land without a runway. The thing drinks fuel and is really hard to justify due to costs. What might be able to replace the Osprey is a heavy lifter type of quad copter that is able to carry a more conventional copter 100 miles or so closer to the area in contention. Some of the combat copters now in use are amazing. It is simply getting around the range issue that presents such a problem. The same holds true for the jump jets.

  5. Making stuff to make stuff by spiritplumber · · Score: 3, Informative
    Shameless plug: I make and sell a laser cutter attachment for 3d printers at http://robots-everywhere.com/r...

    The solution to "electricity too cheap to meter" was inventing cheaper meters.

    The solution to "can't manufacture stuff at home" is inventing cheaper manufacturing tools. I don't think we'll see replicators any time soon, but there's no reason why, for example, plumbers shouldn't be able to print plastic parts for dishwashers on-the-fly or in the shop rather than waiting for it to be delivered.

    Of course, if we get to... http://robots-everywhere.com/r...

    --
    Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
    1. Re:Making stuff to make stuff by peragrin · · Score: 2

      That is what I see too. Actually I see orings and gaskets as the first market. Why ship a tiny bag of 10 orings across the country to get a machine up and running when a local guy can print the orings and install them in an hour.

      After that will be tiny replacement plastic pieces. and maybe some simple metal pieces.

      in 30 odd years every car dealer will have a printer to replace body panels.

      It may take 50-100 years before we start printing things like electronics but even just solid panels and fittings would be a massive savings in freight and shipping costs.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Making stuff to make stuff by godel_56 · · Score: 2

      The solution to "can't manufacture stuff at home" is inventing cheaper manufacturing tools. I don't think we'll see replicators any time soon, but there's no reason why, for example, plumbers shouldn't be able to print plastic parts for dishwashers on-the-fly or in the shop rather than waiting for it to be delivered.

      It will be better to order the part from a 3D copy shop which can afford better equipment and processes, and have sufficient volume to justify the expense.

  6. Speaking of Patents ... by eckenheimer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny how at the start of the US patent system toward the end of the 18th century, patents expired in 28 years. Back then the pace of innovation was glacially slow compared to today. Today, when technological progress happens several orders of magnitude faster, patents now expire in only 28 years. Thanks to Disney, copyrights can last even longer. We live in a truly amazong world! How about 5 years for patents and for trademarks 5 years or as long as they're actively being used?

    --
    "When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain
  7. I bought my first 3D printed parts 4 vinyl cutter by chaosdivine69 · · Score: 2

    My Copam CP-2500 vinyl cutter didn't have a really decent pen option for paper plots. Originally I bought a flimsy ballpoint pen adapter for $12 shipped and using it practically shred the paper since the point tip was so hard and fine. Almost useless. So I went to eBay and found someone who was selling a simple 3D printed rectangular shaped Sharpie pen adapter with a tapered conical holes in it for $5 shipped. It came with two adapters, one for fine tip Sharpies and one for the fatter kind. You simply swap out the knife holder, put in the pen adapter and adjust the cutting pressure to a lighter setting. Works amazingly well and it turned my vinyl cutter into a useful plotter for templates. In this instance, it was the best $5 I have ever spent. The quality is very good and I don't see them ever wearing out.

  8. Re:How it happened? Easy: gigabytes of RAM by Bitmanhome · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I suspect cheap and huge computers had a large effect too. I haven't done a 3D print, but the app that slices an object for printing and plans the head path probably takes a significant amount of CPU and RAM. The printer could easily have been built in the 80s, but only recently have home computers become powerful enough to drive them.

    --
    Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
  9. Possibilities emerging... by kefalonia · · Score: 2

    ...imagine if all hackerspaces built on the cheap one of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... # SatNOGS is for satellite tracking & communication