No, it doesn't say it will replace injection molding. It says it combines it:
Nice selective quoting. You forgot the first sentence of the paragraph;
These two factors, Carbon3D says, could make its technology practical for mass-producing common products — like, say, a toothbrush you buy in a store.
That kaes it seem they want to replace injection molding.
We needed about 250 of them. Even if it took a little longer and the cost was 10 more, we'd still be cheaper off with this type of a manufacturing technique.
Producing 250 is not mass production. You would need to do in the thousands per run to be mass production.
The grid already has enough pumped storages or it would not work at all: right now.
That is a completely unsupported claim. The US had ten pumped storage installations generating less than 20GW of power. In 2014 the US produced 4,092,935GWhrs. That is an average of 467GW. That means that if all pumped storage was working at capacity it would contribute 4% to the total generated.
Read the report before you comment. Most of your solutions dont work and you are ignoring many issues brought up in the report.
Conventionally produced power is now sold day and night. The fixed costs of maintenance and constructions costs are amortized over the amount of electricity produced. If solar takes over much of the day time production then the overall production from conventional sources could be cut in half. They will have the same maintenance and capitol costs amortized of half the production therefore the fixed costs per KWhr produced will be doubled and the cost of night electricity will go up.
And as long as solar doesn't cover 100% of daytime use
The article is touting how solar can produce 500% of daytime use. See the problem? Those conventional plant would have to ramp down and back up again. Ramping costs more than continuous operation.
People can put their electric cars on the grid, and buy energy when it's cheap
That sounds great until you go to drive your car and it is drained.
Did you look at the report? It happens over a three hour period more than doubling output and it is a problem.
The existing fleet includes many long-start resources that need time to come on line before they can support upcoming ramps. Therefore, they must produce at some minimum power output levels in times when this electricity is not needed.
Solar is already causing a problem. It is called the duck graph. Basically as solar rapidly drops off at sunset conventional is having trouble ramping up to meet demand. There is too many incentives for solar production and not enough for storage and that needs to be changed now.
You sell any daytime excess back to the grid during the day, and draw back at night
You make it seem that the same energy that you sell during the day is bought back at night. That is not true. The electricity you sold during the day is used during the day and reduces the production requirements for conventional electricity produces. The electricity you buy at night is produced by those conventional producers. Someone still has to produce the tlectricity you use at night and it will not be another PV user because it will probably be night there too.
see also Tesla's new home battery pack stuff?
Lets install a $20,000 battery in a house and replace it every ten years.
It's odd how it seems like most posters are trying to find problems rather than trying to find solutions.
It's odd how it seems that some people solve 50% of the problem and leave the other 50% to other people to solve. There are solution and the main one being storage. There is too much emphasis on electricity production technology and not enough on storage.
It's almost like you don't want solar power, when 'solar' is one of the things California has so much of.
The problem is that California has almost no "solar" at night and little is being done to compensate for that. It does not matter if 4x the required energy is produced by solar if only a very little of it is available at night.
The article makes it look like solar is the solution to the energy problem. It is part of the solution but more work on storage needs to be done.
These two factors, Carbon3D says, could make its technology practical for mass-producing common products — like, say, a toothbrush that you buy in a store. In theory, it could combine the flexibility of 3D printing with the speed and strength of old-school injection molding — the current standard for mass-producing many types of products and parts, especially plastic ones.
It appears they think that their technology will replace injection molding
I agree completely but few people are working on storage as it is not sexy. They are content with pointing the finger at conventional plants and saying they will handle it. Sorry but the cost of power from conventional plants will rise if they only produce at night.
PV has fallen more sharply than the price of lead acid batteries
Lead acid batteries have long been known to be a poor solution to store large amounts of electricity. They take up lots of room, produce dangerous hydrogen gas and need to be maintained.
the energy market needs to be restructured so as to make storing energy profitable,
The cost of storage will always be high as the costs include the following; 1. the cost of input electricity 2. The decrease in output due to conversion losses. 3. capitol costs for the storage system 4. maintenance costs for the storage system. Today there are very few large scale storage systems like pumped hydro and compressed air storage. Both of these technologies need very specific conditions and can only be used in very few places.Sorry but battery storage is not a large scale solution as it is extremely expensive.
Feed into a small molten salt reservoir buried in the yard to pull out of at night?
Molten salt only works from high intensity solar concentrates and is not something that can be installed in one's back yard. Also, very few high rise apartments have back yards.
Assuming high-draw appliances like the stove, water heater, and furnace were from an alternate source like natural gas,
I thought solar was supposed to allow us to use less fossil fuels like natural gas and not more. Any gains by using solar may be wiped out by burning more natural gas to make up for storage problems. I don't think that is a good plan.
Current systems print from the top. After each layer the object is lowered and resin flows over the top and a new layer is drawn. Sometimes the object has to be sunk and then brought back to the surface which slows production.
In the new method the object is drawn on the bottom of the pool and as the object is drawn up out of the pool more resin flows in much faster than on the top.
You are close byt not quite. The breakthrough is explained as follows;
Meanwhile, oxygen prevents this reaction from occurring — so to stop the object from simply hardening and sticking to the floor of the pool, there's a layer of dissolved oxygen there, creating an ultra-thin "dead zone" at the very bottom.
The light is projected through a very thin layer at the bottom without curing. The resin at almost the bottom is cured. The light never reaches the top layer. I you look closely at their graphic you will see the object almost reaches the bottom of the container.
Did anyone else notice that the last two digits only counted up to 60? They sped the video up to make minutes look like seconds. Sure it is faster than additive printing but 6 minutes 35 seconds to make a small model is much slower than injection molding.
Partially covering something like half the south-facing side of a roof has been sufficient to cover a home's needs for quite some time.
Only true if there is something else to supply electricity at night. Net zero is not off the grid. The thing is that if cheap solar eats into the day production from conventional thermal then night power will become more expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
The article touts producing 500% of daytime need. See the problem with the "solution"?
No, it doesn't say it will replace injection molding. It says it combines it:
Nice selective quoting. You forgot the first sentence of the paragraph;
These two factors, Carbon3D says, could make its technology practical for mass-producing common products — like, say, a toothbrush you buy in a store.
That kaes it seem they want to replace injection molding.
We needed about 250 of them. Even if it took a little longer and the cost was 10 more, we'd still be cheaper off with this type of a manufacturing technique.
Producing 250 is not mass production. You would need to do in the thousands per run to be mass production.
The grid already has enough pumped storages or it would not work at all: right now.
That is a completely unsupported claim. The US had ten pumped storage installations generating less than 20GW of power. In 2014 the US produced 4,092,935GWhrs. That is an average of 467GW. That means that if all pumped storage was working at capacity it would contribute 4% to the total generated.
Read the report before you comment. Most of your solutions dont work and you are ignoring many issues brought up in the report.
Conventionally produced power is now sold day and night. The fixed costs of maintenance and constructions costs are amortized over the amount of electricity produced. If solar takes over much of the day time production then the overall production from conventional sources could be cut in half. They will have the same maintenance and capitol costs amortized of half the production therefore the fixed costs per KWhr produced will be doubled and the cost of night electricity will go up.
Nice theory. Do you have any practical data to back that up. Are there days when lake effect fails? If so it is not a reliable phenomenon.
What if the electricity is not produced when you need it?
And as long as solar doesn't cover 100% of daytime use
The article is touting how solar can produce 500% of daytime use. See the problem? Those conventional plant would have to ramp down and back up again. Ramping costs more than continuous operation.
People can put their electric cars on the grid, and buy energy when it's cheap
That sounds great until you go to drive your car and it is drained.
What state has sunlight at sunset in California? When California is having it's sunset issue the rest if the continental US is already dark.
$41M in bitcoins on a thumbdrive would weigh much less.
That does not help California as the rest of the US is dark before they are. There are not many solar panels in the Pacific Ocean.
Did you look at the report? It happens over a three hour period more than doubling output and it is a problem.
The existing fleet includes many long-start resources that need time to come on line before they can support upcoming ramps. Therefore, they must produce at some minimum power output levels in times when this electricity is not needed.
Wow that has never been though of. Even something a simple as that has problems. Holding heat for long periods is difficult.
And lets add a set of wheels and a roof, so we drive the battery around during the day. Sounds like a good plan.
So it can be discharged when needed at night? Yeah, good plan.
The problem is that the solar people think that solar solves the whole problem.
There is a limit as to how fast a plant can ramp.
Solar is already causing a problem. It is called the duck graph. Basically as solar rapidly drops off at sunset conventional is having trouble ramping up to meet demand. There is too many incentives for solar production and not enough for storage and that needs to be changed now.
You sell any daytime excess back to the grid during the day, and draw back at night
You make it seem that the same energy that you sell during the day is bought back at night. That is not true. The electricity you sold during the day is used during the day and reduces the production requirements for conventional electricity produces. The electricity you buy at night is produced by those conventional producers. Someone still has to produce the tlectricity you use at night and it will not be another PV user because it will probably be night there too.
see also Tesla's new home battery pack stuff?
Lets install a $20,000 battery in a house and replace it every ten years.
It's odd how it seems like most posters are trying to find problems rather than trying to find solutions.
It's odd how it seems that some people solve 50% of the problem and leave the other 50% to other people to solve. There are solution and the main one being storage. There is too much emphasis on electricity production technology and not enough on storage.
It's almost like you don't want solar power, when 'solar' is one of the things California has so much of.
The problem is that California has almost no "solar" at night and little is being done to compensate for that. It does not matter if 4x the required energy is produced by solar if only a very little of it is available at night.
The article makes it look like solar is the solution to the energy problem. It is part of the solution but more work on storage needs to be done.
Look at http://www.ambri.com/technolog... [ambri.com] American made. Cheap and effective.
"Cheap" is a relative term. It is interesting that nowhere in their site is a actual cost of an installation.
Too bad the company isn't saying that.
These two factors, Carbon3D says, could make its technology practical for mass-producing common products — like, say, a toothbrush that you buy in a store. In theory, it could combine the flexibility of 3D printing with the speed and strength of old-school injection molding — the current standard for mass-producing many types of products and parts, especially plastic ones.
It appears they think that their technology will replace injection molding
Storage is today's big issue in the energy world.
I agree completely but few people are working on storage as it is not sexy. They are content with pointing the finger at conventional plants and saying they will handle it. Sorry but the cost of power from conventional plants will rise if they only produce at night.
PV has fallen more sharply than the price of lead acid batteries
Lead acid batteries have long been known to be a poor solution to store large amounts of electricity. They take up lots of room, produce dangerous hydrogen gas and need to be maintained.
the energy market needs to be restructured so as to make storing energy profitable,
The cost of storage will always be high as the costs include the following;
1. the cost of input electricity
2. The decrease in output due to conversion losses.
3. capitol costs for the storage system
4. maintenance costs for the storage system.
Today there are very few large scale storage systems like pumped hydro and compressed air storage. Both of these technologies need very specific conditions and can only be used in very few places.Sorry but battery storage is not a large scale solution as it is extremely expensive.
Feed into a small molten salt reservoir buried in the yard to pull out of at night?
Molten salt only works from high intensity solar concentrates and is not something that can be installed in one's back yard. Also, very few high rise apartments have back yards.
Assuming high-draw appliances like the stove, water heater, and furnace were from an alternate source like natural gas,
I thought solar was supposed to allow us to use less fossil fuels like natural gas and not more. Any gains by using solar may be wiped out by burning more natural gas to make up for storage problems. I don't think that is a good plan.
You funny.
Current systems print from the top. After each layer the object is lowered and resin flows over the top and a new layer is drawn. Sometimes the object has to be sunk and then brought back to the surface which slows production.
In the new method the object is drawn on the bottom of the pool and as the object is drawn up out of the pool more resin flows in much faster than on the top.
You are close byt not quite. The breakthrough is explained as follows;
Meanwhile, oxygen prevents this reaction from occurring — so to stop the object from simply hardening and sticking to the floor of the pool, there's a layer of dissolved oxygen there, creating an ultra-thin "dead zone" at the very bottom.
The light is projected through a very thin layer at the bottom without curing. The resin at almost the bottom is cured. The light never reaches the top layer. I you look closely at their graphic you will see the object almost reaches the bottom of the container.
Did anyone else notice that the last two digits only counted up to 60? They sped the video up to make minutes look like seconds. Sure it is faster than additive printing but 6 minutes 35 seconds to make a small model is much slower than injection molding.
Partially covering something like half the south-facing side of a roof has been sufficient to cover a home's needs for quite some time.
Only true if there is something else to supply electricity at night. Net zero is not off the grid. The thing is that if cheap solar eats into the day production from conventional thermal then night power will become more expensive.