It's much easier to land on a moon then to get to an asteroid. Moons are quite large, have their own (significant amount) of gravity. Asteroids are small, have eccentric orbits.
Right now there are 10365 planes flying over the world. They also perfectly tracked the last few plane crashes up to the moment they disappeared. So position is covered.
The problem is not slinging the head around. You could even do that with much more speed then is done right now.
However, the real problem is cooling and bonding. If you print quicker you need to cool the material quicker. If you cool it quicker, it doesn't bond to the rest of the material really well.
We generally speak in mm^3 / second when we talk about printing speed these days. As that's what counts in the end. Volume per time. With the accuracy we want, naturally.
First off, almost nobody is missing steps in their cheap 3D printers. They simply do not move fast enough for that to happen. And if they are missing steps you have a bigger issue, usually lots of friction somewhere.
Secondly, 200 steps per rotation is normal for motors. However, the drivers everyone is using do 16x microstepping, good for 3200 steps per revolution. Accurate steps per revolution. That's better then 4096 +- 2 steps.
You also lose the close coupling between the 4 axis that you need (the feed stock of the material is also an axis that you need to control), which is a big deal in running accurate prints.
The cheap hobby servos will also have mechanical play, which will cause vibrations to be transferred to the head, which will result in a reduction of print quality.
I'm also willing to argue that it's more expensive. But I didn't do the math on that part yet.
(Who am I to say so? Just a guy who has been working at Ultimaker for 2 years. Kinda know what's needed for quality 3D printing at a low price and what's not)
I worked in this area 5 year ago. The switches have been replaced by a 2nd CPU which handles safety, and cannot be overridden from the main CPU.
So, all-green cannot happen. But the systems are far from safe. System I worked on was based on Linux, had pretty much an open-telnet server running. But is intended to run on a private network, not connected to the internet. However, connecting to this network you could own all the lights in seconds.
But, as you say, the value of this would be low. You could disrupt traffic flow for a while. But that's it.
You're generalizing. Just because it does not work for metal does not mean it does not work for plastics. Plastics have a very different thermal conductivity.
Heated chambers are not patented. A specific implementation of the heated chamber is patented.
(Do have to agree that they concentrate too much on the machine. The machine is hardly the problem)
For part design I've switched to DesignSpark Mechanical. It's not really 100% free. But I really like the interface and how stuff works. It's a bit like SketchUp on steroids, but then made for CAD.
Dropped my Ultimaker from my bicycle. Twice. Still prints without any adjustments. Most RepRap kits are not that sturdy. You get what you pay for in this case.
Standardization in 3D printing is STL right now. And a large standard commission is working on the next version (AMF).
Software, oh, did I mention this yet. 3D model to toolpath. OpenSource. A few options available. My own, Cura, started as a hobby project, after 6 months I got hired by Ultimaker to make it awesome. Which it is these days. Still OpenSource, now just more awesome.
3D model creation? Blender. 100% FOSS. OpenSCAD, 100% geeky. DesignsparkMechanical, only partially free, but 100% awesome.
Ok, there are a few major things WRONG in this article.
First of. Cura. Cura is my project, I started development 2 years ago. I started in my free time, and after a few months of development Ultimaker hired me to continue development. As every user was switching towards it. It has been open source, free, and released for 2 years now. (It is a perfect success story for Open Source and I think Slashdot totally missed the opportunity here to properly see this) Thanks to Ultimaker Cura has seen a HUGE development boost and really became awesome for Ultimaker AND RepRap users.
Next, WiFi is not in the machine out of the box. It is an add-on.
The UM2 is a professional looking version of our already very successful Ultimaker-Original kit. It has great printing quality for a nice price tag. Yes, you can do cheaper, but not if you want the same print quality. If you want cheaper then the UM2, buy the UM-Original kit.
You are so right on this one. Makerbot is all marketing all the way down. Their machine isn't special (hotend+extruder copied from the UP!, Z platform copied and slightly improved from Ultimaker). Their move away from OpenSource also hasn't done much good to the "hacker crowd".
But, reporting from Ultimaker here (you know, the 15 man company from the Netherlands that sells 3D printers). Dual extrusion is possible in a good way. We're working out the kinks and don't think it's ready to mass sell as Makerbot does it now. But we are getting towards Ultimaker quality.
Reporting from Ultimaker. You know, the real OpenSource 3D printer, that actually DOES do open-source software development.
Our printer hit the market 2 year ago. It's still top of the line. Sure they are cheaper options, and even a Chinese copy. You know what, they don't get the same quality and speed that we do. The Cube is noisy, slow, prints in low res (as it's not allowed to compete with the expensive Dimension 150) getting one of these will more likely disappoint you in the capabilities of 3D printing then providing you with something useful.
Stratasys buying Makerbot is surely interesting. As they are paying about 20k for each printer sold so far. So they are not paying for the current market, they must be paying for the marketing, and thingiverse. People have been pulling models off thingiverse already because of this deal.
As on the Ultimaker open-source side. We just released our new version of our Open Source software solution Cura. Which is all AGPL, the GUI and the engine. Everything is usable on RepRap machines, and you can follow development as it happens. No secrets here.
PLA is not water soluble (That's PVA). And works outdoor fine, it just has a low glass-transition temperature where it won't work very well in high heat areas.
(counter-third) Cura doesn't gives a rat's ass about your surface normal. And the upcoming AMF standard support curved triangles to solve the millions of tiny faces problem.
I'm sad to hear that you own a Makerbot. I got an Ultimaker a year ago. And now I'm working at Ultimaker for a few months on software developement. We leave Ultimakers unattended a lot. I've added extra safety features in the RepRap firmware for this reason. We've done 100+ hour successful prints on our larger sized printers (up to 52cm). And we're working on improving the safety on our ready-build printers. But I have no fear in leaving our printers run unattended right now.
Makerbot does little innovation and mostly marketing. PLA printing? Guess who started that. The Makerbot extruder? copy of the UP! extruder. Gantry system? Ultimaker started with that. 3D scanner? Makerbot already did that in 2010 but they erased most traces of it.
As for the filament price. I know a raw roll of 0.75kg PLA costs us about 20 euros in bulk. The producer of the filament pays 4-5 euro's for the raw pallets, but has done a 20k investment for the extruder, and numerous hours tweaking the production process. So the producer needs to sell 1333 rolls before breaking even at the current price. The reseller also makes some profit for splitting the bulk into single rolls and shipping them. Add some tax and you are at the 30 euro price (which is 40 dollar, your factor is slightly off because I mixed euros with dollars)
In pure solid modeling FOSS we have FreeCAD and OpenSCAD.
Blender has some help tools for solid modeling (the "select none-manifold edges" [ctrl]+[shift]+[alt]+[m] really helps, as well as the remove duplicate vertexes with a range setting)
Board gamers love 3D printers for custom play pieces. Lego builders like them for custom bits. Robot builders like them for getting that missing bracket/piece now instead of in 2 weeks for 10x the money. Architects like them for scale models. Product developers like them for prototypes. Artists like them to produce new and interesting art.
And I like them, because I'm printing an Desert Eagle for an arcade cabinet.
(Actually printing a working gun that does not have the risk to blow up in your face will be proven to be quite difficult)
You sir. Sorry for the word. Are an idiot. And have no idea what you are talking about.
A kg of filament is a LOT of filament. Plastic is light and objects are printed partially hollow. I do expect prices to drop a bit in a few years, as the raw plastics pellets costs about 4-5 euro per kg. (asking for 40kg per dollar is just sticking your head up your ass and asking for a pony)
Great for programmers, sucks for average humans. (And well known within the 3D printing communities. It's the 2nd most uploaded file on thingiverse, next to stl)
Slashdot Mirror
This is pretty much how the leap-motion works. Nothing really new to see here, move along.
Whether you are measuring my height, fingerprint, penis size or whatever metric you come up with
Penis size is pretty useless as a biometric. It changes depending on the site being accessed.
So, that's perfect, password per site, and hard to fake.
I'm not, the code I maintain is to complex for that, and there are no real hotspots. 15% less runtime means a lot to me.
Go play KerbalSpaceProgram.
It's much easier to land on a moon then to get to an asteroid. Moons are quite large, have their own (significant amount) of gravity. Asteroids are small, have eccentric orbits.
We kinda do know how many planes there are flying.
http://www.flightradar24.com/
Right now there are 10365 planes flying over the world. They also perfectly tracked the last few plane crashes up to the moment they disappeared. So position is covered.
Print heads can be tiny:
http://daid.eu/~daid/IMG_20140...
The problem is not slinging the head around. You could even do that with much more speed then is done right now.
However, the real problem is cooling and bonding. If you print quicker you need to cool the material quicker. If you cool it quicker, it doesn't bond to the rest of the material really well.
We generally speak in mm^3 / second when we talk about printing speed these days. As that's what counts in the end. Volume per time. With the accuracy we want, naturally.
- Daid, Ultimaker R&D. The Cura guy.
Did some programming&debugging from inside a 3D printer:
http://daid.eu/~daid/IMG-20140...
Pretty much all lies from the start.
First off, almost nobody is missing steps in their cheap 3D printers. They simply do not move fast enough for that to happen. And if they are missing steps you have a bigger issue, usually lots of friction somewhere.
Secondly, 200 steps per rotation is normal for motors. However, the drivers everyone is using do 16x microstepping, good for 3200 steps per revolution. Accurate steps per revolution. That's better then 4096 +- 2 steps.
You also lose the close coupling between the 4 axis that you need (the feed stock of the material is also an axis that you need to control), which is a big deal in running accurate prints.
The cheap hobby servos will also have mechanical play, which will cause vibrations to be transferred to the head, which will result in a reduction of print quality.
I'm also willing to argue that it's more expensive. But I didn't do the math on that part yet.
(Who am I to say so? Just a guy who has been working at Ultimaker for 2 years. Kinda know what's needed for quality 3D printing at a low price and what's not)
I worked in this area 5 year ago. The switches have been replaced by a 2nd CPU which handles safety, and cannot be overridden from the main CPU.
So, all-green cannot happen. But the systems are far from safe. System I worked on was based on Linux, had pretty much an open-telnet server running. But is intended to run on a private network, not connected to the internet. However, connecting to this network you could own all the lights in seconds.
But, as you say, the value of this would be low. You could disrupt traffic flow for a while. But that's it.
http://daid.eu/~daid/IMG_20130...
Printed on a "crap extruder" printer, without problems.
You're generalizing. Just because it does not work for metal does not mean it does not work for plastics. Plastics have a very different thermal conductivity.
Heated chambers are not patented. A specific implementation of the heated chamber is patented.
(Do have to agree that they concentrate too much on the machine. The machine is hardly the problem)
I know a guy how consistently prints watertight cups.
PLA layers fuse very well. ABS is harder, which is why everyone is switching towards PLA.
More expensive is usually better. But, 20k machines from 3D systems are getting the same quality as 2k hobby machines.
For part design I've switched to DesignSpark Mechanical. It's not really 100% free. But I really like the interface and how stuff works. It's a bit like SketchUp on steroids, but then made for CAD.
Dropped my Ultimaker from my bicycle. Twice. Still prints without any adjustments. Most RepRap kits are not that sturdy. You get what you pay for in this case.
Standardization in 3D printing is STL right now. And a large standard commission is working on the next version (AMF).
Software, oh, did I mention this yet. 3D model to toolpath. OpenSource. A few options available. My own, Cura, started as a hobby project, after 6 months I got hired by Ultimaker to make it awesome. Which it is these days. Still OpenSource, now just more awesome.
3D model creation? Blender. 100% FOSS. OpenSCAD, 100% geeky. DesignsparkMechanical, only partially free, but 100% awesome.
Thanks for all the FUD.
Ok, there are a few major things WRONG in this article.
First of. Cura. Cura is my project, I started development 2 years ago. I started in my free time, and after a few months of development Ultimaker hired me to continue development. As every user was switching towards it. It has been open source, free, and released for 2 years now. (It is a perfect success story for Open Source and I think Slashdot totally missed the opportunity here to properly see this)
Thanks to Ultimaker Cura has seen a HUGE development boost and really became awesome for Ultimaker AND RepRap users.
Next, WiFi is not in the machine out of the box. It is an add-on.
The UM2 is a professional looking version of our already very successful Ultimaker-Original kit. It has great printing quality for a nice price tag. Yes, you can do cheaper, but not if you want the same print quality. If you want cheaper then the UM2, buy the UM-Original kit.
You are so right on this one. Makerbot is all marketing all the way down. Their machine isn't special (hotend+extruder copied from the UP!, Z platform copied and slightly improved from Ultimaker). Their move away from OpenSource also hasn't done much good to the "hacker crowd".
But, reporting from Ultimaker here (you know, the 15 man company from the Netherlands that sells 3D printers). Dual extrusion is possible in a good way. We're working out the kinks and don't think it's ready to mass sell as Makerbot does it now. But we are getting towards Ultimaker quality.
Reporting from Ultimaker. You know, the real OpenSource 3D printer, that actually DOES do open-source software development.
Our printer hit the market 2 year ago. It's still top of the line. Sure they are cheaper options, and even a Chinese copy. You know what, they don't get the same quality and speed that we do.
The Cube is noisy, slow, prints in low res (as it's not allowed to compete with the expensive Dimension 150) getting one of these will more likely disappoint you in the capabilities of 3D printing then providing you with something useful.
Stratasys buying Makerbot is surely interesting. As they are paying about 20k for each printer sold so far. So they are not paying for the current market, they must be paying for the marketing, and thingiverse. People have been pulling models off thingiverse already because of this deal.
As on the Ultimaker open-source side. We just released our new version of our Open Source software solution Cura. Which is all AGPL, the GUI and the engine. Everything is usable on RepRap machines, and you can follow development as it happens. No secrets here.
You are so right on this one. It looks more like a small dog then a cat.
Sounds like a lead-acid battery. Which is heavy, but cheap compared to lighter alternatives.
PLA is not water soluble (That's PVA). And works outdoor fine, it just has a low glass-transition temperature where it won't work very well in high heat areas.
(counter-third) Cura doesn't gives a rat's ass about your surface normal. And the upcoming AMF standard support curved triangles to solve the millions of tiny faces problem.
I'm sad to hear that you own a Makerbot. I got an Ultimaker a year ago. And now I'm working at Ultimaker for a few months on software developement. We leave Ultimakers unattended a lot. I've added extra safety features in the RepRap firmware for this reason. We've done 100+ hour successful prints on our larger sized printers (up to 52cm). And we're working on improving the safety on our ready-build printers. But I have no fear in leaving our printers run unattended right now.
Makerbot does little innovation and mostly marketing. PLA printing? Guess who started that. The Makerbot extruder? copy of the UP! extruder. Gantry system? Ultimaker started with that. 3D scanner? Makerbot already did that in 2010 but they erased most traces of it.
As for the filament price. I know a raw roll of 0.75kg PLA costs us about 20 euros in bulk. The producer of the filament pays 4-5 euro's for the raw pallets, but has done a 20k investment for the extruder, and numerous hours tweaking the production process. So the producer needs to sell 1333 rolls before breaking even at the current price. The reseller also makes some profit for splitting the bulk into single rolls and shipping them. Add some tax and you are at the 30 euro price (which is 40 dollar, your factor is slightly off because I mixed euros with dollars)
In pure solid modeling FOSS we have FreeCAD and OpenSCAD.
Blender has some help tools for solid modeling (the "select none-manifold edges" [ctrl]+[shift]+[alt]+[m] really helps, as well as the remove duplicate vertexes with a range setting)
Board gamers love 3D printers for custom play pieces.
Lego builders like them for custom bits.
Robot builders like them for getting that missing bracket/piece now instead of in 2 weeks for 10x the money.
Architects like them for scale models.
Product developers like them for prototypes.
Artists like them to produce new and interesting art.
And I like them, because I'm printing an Desert Eagle for an arcade cabinet.
(Actually printing a working gun that does not have the risk to blow up in your face will be proven to be quite difficult)
You sir. Sorry for the word. Are an idiot. And have no idea what you are talking about.
A kg of filament is a LOT of filament. Plastic is light and objects are printed partially hollow. I do expect prices to drop a bit in a few years, as the raw plastics pellets costs about 4-5 euro per kg. (asking for 40kg per dollar is just sticking your head up your ass and asking for a pony)
Great for programmers, sucks for average humans. (And well known within the 3D printing communities. It's the 2nd most uploaded file on thingiverse, next to stl)