LONGECITY

The price of 3D printers (rapid prototyping machines) is now coming down:

http://www.nytimes.c...ogy/07copy.html

A company named Desktop Factory has just come out with a model that is below $5000, which puts it in reach for home consumers to buy and use.

This type of affordable system could one day revolutionize the economy and its supply chain, as the electronic blueprints for parts are effortlessly transmitted to any corner of the country, where they would be turned into parts on site. It would be the equivalent of a fax machine, but for small parts.

This would reduce the burden on a country's transportation system, while also giving the manufacturing supply chain much more flexibility, as small manufacturing shops could easily switch from manufacturing one type of component to another, to fulfill a wide variety of changing market demands.

But I'm wondering about the possible uses in facilitating home laboratories, etc. Chem lab technicians are always keeping their catalogues handy, to order glassware, and the rare few even do their own glass-blowing, etc to prepare glassware themselves.

With the 3D printer, you could print petri dishes, test tubes, pipettes, etc on the spot, as needed, whenever you wanted.
Hopefully lab-on-chip devices will make any and all macroscopic lab paraphernalia a thing of the past, but I'm thinking that 3D printers could be of great benefit in facilitating smaller home labs eventually.

That is impressive. I am quite sure I heard about it, this technology, long time ago. Indeed as the article states it has been around for some time.

This is way cool. I saw a program on the Discovery Channel a few weeks ago about these things. If they could get down to the cost that an individual could realistically afford to put in their home, it would certainly revolutionize things.

More:

http://www.belfastte...icle2525114.ece

Right now they are an expensive toy. Anything you make on it is going to be a piece of crap. Make a plastic spoon and the handle will likely break when you lift something. Plus it will cost you $3 to make a 5 cent spoon. In time it will get better. In time, drugs, food, everything will be manufactured at the point of need but that day is far off. One day we will all live in an individual underground bunker and never come out. We will roam the universe through virtual reality and not notice the difference. Reality will be for a small bunch of nuts who dont mind getting bitten by bugs and so on.

Here, go to this site and you can see a comparison of the various approaches:

http://home.att.net/...island/home.htm

xanadu, there are technologies that use melting (eg Selective Laser Melting, E-Beam Melting) that will generate fully dense parts with good strength.

http://www.industria...howto/197801484

This technology is fast gaining attention for its ability to deliver fully dense parts with properties equal to wrought materials, at a cost and speed substantially less than metal-based additive-fabrication methods.

EBM not only creates unprecedented strength-to-weight and buy-to-fly ratios, reducing the cost of raw materials and the weight of the component, it also opens the door to new design configurations.

When they say "buy to fly" -- they mean you can build the part with E-Beam and stick it in your jetplane right away to fly with the thing. So the technologies are evolving beyond making flimsy mock-ups. They're calling it "additive fabrication" now, instead of "rapid prototyping" because they're trying to get away from the impression that they're just making prototypes/mock-ups with it.

I agree, Xanadu (although I love the duck they made!). But to be this far ahead already is still pretty impressive. Give it another couple of years and they'll probably be well developed. It has the potential to revolutionise the manufacturing industry particularly, no need to cut out and mould parts anymore in a labourious process, just design it, press the "make" button and there it appears.

Wow, here's a couple of clips that I found to be mind-blowing:





Man, I think we're back in the early 1980s, when there were good quality color photocopiers, but there still weren't yet any laser printers for the home.

The desktop revolution is coming.

Wow, here's a couple of clips that I found to be mind-blowing:





Man, I think we're back in the early 1980s, when there were good quality color photocopiers, but there still weren't yet any laser printers for the home.

The desktop revolution is coming.

Wow, that stuff is amazing. Makes me excited for what is to come.

It could potentially have some interetsing uses. Ladies, too embarrassed to buy a sex toy ? Design and build your own!

Wow, this stuff is stunning:

http://www.designnew.../CA6439697.html

These fabricating machines can already do titanium, and soon even Inconel!

So when your skeleton wears out, you'll be able to get a replacement in the alloy of your choice.

Combine this rapid prototyping ("additive fabrication") technology with lab-on-chips and stem cells, and we'll have organ-printing.

You could print the replacement organ from cells having a modified genome, and then have it implanted into you. After all, why would you want the replacement tissue's genome cluttered with extra information relating to embryonic growth processes, when it's being implanted into you as a full-sized organ?

Your replacement organ would have perfectly young cells, with un-glycated proteins and perfectly functional mitochondria, and un-damaged DNA. You could make yourself young, one organ at a time.

Wow, this thing is insane, man - you can actually build in moving parts, in situ:

http://www.zcorp.com...il-450.asp?ID=1

The E-beam technology looks cooler though, for building metallic medical implants.

Wow, this thing is insane, man - you can actually build in moving parts, in situ:

http://www.zcorp.com...il-450.asp?ID=1

The E-beam technology looks cooler though, for building metallic medical implants.

In that second clip from earlier, the guy is showing off a gear thingy that looks really complicated with moving parts. He said you just have to design it in CAD with space between the parts to make sure they can move.

Yeah, that's really amazing that you just design in the gaps to keep components separate, and they won't stick.

If e-beam could be made cheaper, then smaller workshops could custom design sportscars or automotive components, and it would bring more creativity and vitality into the industry:

http://www.jasonprin...ng-metal-parts/

You wouldn't have to ship in parts to get your car repaired -- you'd just have them printed at the local garage/autoshop. Heh, they'd pay some token fee to the automaker to download the part design, and then print it out for you.

(Then of course the automakers would get mad, once they find out the part designs are available free on BitTorrent! GM's legal team will be faxing warning letters all over the place, threatening to sue illegal downloaders. Then Steve Jobs will step in to announce iTuneUp, selling parts for 99cents per download. Then Google will announce plans to buy YouPrint.com and encourage people to upload all the part designs they want.)


Here's an old book review about "fab-labs":

http://www.businessw...31027_mz005.htm

Meanwhile, Stratasys has announced a contest for highschool and university students for radical redesign of parts:

http://aec.cadalyst....l.jsp?id=425616

That's really cool, that they're even opening it up to the highschool level.
Edited by manofsan, 14 May 2007 - 05:24 AM.

In that second clip from earlier, the guy is showing off a gear thingy that looks really complicated with moving parts.

fascinating!

One day they will have both: nonconducting and conducting dust and so they will be able to print a motor.

And then they will be able to print a printer!

(At least the mechanical parts. The electronic parts can stay outside connected via an interface)

And that printer will be able to print a smaller printer and that printer will be able to print a smaller printer and that printer will be able to print a smaller printer and that printer will be able to print a smaller printer and that printer will be able to print a smaller printer and that printer will be able to print a smaller printer...

The 3D printers will not reach the nano scale with the same technique, because physics is a little bit different down there, but maybe they will print bigger parts that are useful for tools for nano applications

(and that reminds me of Richard Feynman's vision.)



the 3D-printed gear thingy :

And that printer will be able to print a smaller printer

.....what a pity, that won't work easily that way, because if you have a 3D-printer with a resolution of x pixels/inch, the smallest structures that it will print will have the size of 1/x inch, but it won't print a structure with a nozzle smaller than 1/x inch, but that's what you need for the smaller printer. So external parts are always needed for that vision.

Are you arguing with yourself again, Matthias? )

I first thought this thread was a joke by the title. It seems too sci-fi ish to be real. This is without a doubt the coolest thing I've seen for a long time. Incredible!

Are you arguing with yourself again, Matthias? )

lol yes, because this is really inspiring. I haven't expected a development in this direction and I am sure these printers and the materials of the objects will improve very quickly.



a variety of 3D-printed objects:

I suppose if/when these become smaller and more widespread, there will be companies that mass produce the raw materials needed for the machines. This will give them the ability to produce the raw materials very cheaply, I would assume.

Okay, let me throw out some more ideas that I just thought up.

We've all heard about DRM (Digital Rights Management). That's when you download your music/movie from some content-provider using special software, and it only allows you to play it for your personal use, and not to pirate it around to all your friends.

Well, imagine if you could redesign supply chain software (like SAP, PeopleSoft, etc) to work through DRM. That means your supply chain software will download the part design from GM/Toyota/Chrysler/etc, and only allow you to print one copy of it on the part-fabbing machine. That way their execs aren't sweating at night, worrying that you've printed out 50 parts for all your friends.

So this would encourage GM/Ford/Chrysler/etc to make their part designs available for you to download and print -- at a price, naturally. But it saves everybody on transportation costs. It saves on stock/supply management, storage costs, floorspace, etc. The concept of "just in time delivery" would simply be reduced to download time from the internet, plus the time it takes to print the part.

If everybody's mainly downloading parts through the internet, then it means fewer heavy transport trucks roaring down the highway hauling parts, and less pollution being generated. It means less overproduction in factories, where they're producing according to a demand forecast, because now you just produce only on demand, when the individual end-user actually asks for it. It means less material wastage during the production process, because you're making stuff out of powder/etc where the excess can be saved and recycled for later re-use. Because you're working with the raw building materials, you then have the additional flexibility of being able to make whatever damn part you want/need, and not get stuck with whatever the local store has to offer. You'll never have to worry about your product being sold out again, as long as there's the raw material available. The supply chain for physical goods would work much more efficiently, and the cost of goods would come down. The economy would be less polluting, the Earth would be cleaner.

So we're talking about all kinds of savings, all the way down the supply chain. These fabbing machines would be like ribosomes.

When your cells demand enzymes and other proteins, do you make them in one central part of your body and then haul them across your bloodstream to the cells? Hell no -- you make the stuff on site locally, inside the very cells in need of those substances. You simply send the raw materials over to the cells, so that they can fab them into whatever they need.

GM/Ford/Chrysler these days are always worried about being driven out of business. Maybe if they were to change their business model fundamentally, and become content providers, allowing people to download and fab stuff on demand, then they could survive and thrive, and turn the tables on their opponents. They could focus mainly on design -- which is what everyone says they're lacking in -- and leave the headaches of manufacturing, labour disputes, etc behind. The aforementioned cost savings by short-circuiting the supply chain could enable GM/Ford/Chrysler/etc to charge a higher margin per part downloaded. They could come out ahead. (How could they be worse off than they are now, losing money and tottering on bankruptcy)

Anyway, just some thoughts.
Edited by manofsan, 15 May 2007 - 03:01 AM.

Yeah, I have heard DRM. I have also heard of open source.

Heh, open source is good too.

Just because there is software that does DRM, doesn't mean there can't be an open source community too.

It's just that the highly talented are often wanting to be highly paid, and they want their moolah protected. So they'll want DRM, so that they can get their royalties.
But the point is that these people with the intellectual property are the ones with an existing content base.

If you did everything only purely through open source, designing and building parts yourself for free, it might take you a lot longer to build up a base of useful part designs.
But if you have the DRM at the same time, as a parallel channel for those highly talented who also happen to like getting highly paid, then you're going to be able to tap into that large base of existing intellectual property -- all those parts that are already patented, and which you still might be glad to use even though you have to pay a royalty/fee.

Eventually, when the open source base gets strong enough, you might see more consumers shift their preference in that direction. Just like how you see more companies switching to Linux, now that it has become more mature/robust/etc.
But Rome wasn't built in a day. In order to move things in that direction, you have to broaden/deepen your incentives up front.

Just something for you to consider.

I found Arcam's electron-beam melting technology to be interesting, since it works with metals, including titanium and soon even inconel.



But it's so damn expensive. So I thought I'd email Desktop Factory / IdeaLabs
to find out if they had any plans to make a cheaper version of E-beam. They replied back to me right away:

Thank you for your inquiry and interest in Desktop Factory. Let me
start from the Arcam question - we are just getting ready to bring low cost
3D printing to the market using nylon based materials. This process has
taken over 5 years. We are just beginning to see some success for this
higher end metals fabrication market - but it is extremely expensive.
Between patents and the demand at the high end for rapid manufacturing
we believe that our focus needs to remain on our current endeavor for
some time to come.


We are putting together a spec sheet over the next few weeks so until
that is ready I will just give you a few particulars on Desktop Factory.
In terms of sending you a part - we are in the process of extensive
integration testing and we log and retain every part built for our
records.  It will be a few more months before we can fulfill our very
long list of parts requests. 



The Desktop Factory 125 ci will be $4995.00 US



The form factor you see on the web site is the actual look/feel



The build envelope is 125 cubic inches at 5X5X5, you may build multiple
parts in the envelope



The layers are 10 mils, and finest detail would be 40  - measured as
0.01 and 0.04 inches respectively



The build speed is 1 cubic inch in 1 - 3 hours



The material is a nylon composite and will be the only material that can
be used - our target price will be $1.00 per ci



The final part is quite robust, we have dropped many without breakage;
various tests will be run prior to formal launch



The software we support is almost any CAD 3D Solid Object Modeling
package as long as it outputs an STL file. This includes SolidWorks,
Catia, AutoDesk, Rhino, Alibre, etc. etc.  We provide the software that
accepts the STL file, rotates it and sizes it with final preparation for
printing.  The file can be submitted thru email, downloaded from the web
and sent via FTP.



We will have a 90 day warranty and annual service contract - the cost
should be industry standard at about 15% of purchase price



The product will become commercially available late this year / early
2008. Shipments outside the US are planned for late 2008. If you would
like to continue to receive information - please sign up for our Desktop
Factory newsletter!



 



Regards,



Cathy Lewis



CEO

Someone tried fabricating 3D fractals with this tech. See www.peterjansen-art.com/fractals/fractalsurface.htm



The fractals images were created with Chaoscope, a very cool (and free) fractal program.

wow, they look great, nature has got the prettiest design in itself.

And that printer will be able to print a smaller printer

that won't work easily that way, because if you have a 3D-printer with a resolution of x pixels/inch, the smallest structures that it will print will have the size of 1/x inch, but it won't print a structure with a nozzle smaller than 1/x inch

That's true if the z-resolution is equal to the x- and y-resolution, but if you adjust the behavior of the surface tension in that way that the z-resolution is smaller, then you can print a smaller printer in an angle of 90 degree and turn it over afterwards: