Just got this in email. Didn’t check for other threads. Haven’t been to Snopes!
Tell me this is bullshit!
Nope, not bullshit at all. These things are used in mechanical protoyping applications, as output for 3D CAD systems. There’s even a homebrew version.
Yeah, I have one of the Cupcakes. Fun little gadget. Trying to figure out how to best increase the size to do larger pieces.
You want some real fun? There’s a company in the UK developing one that will print chocolate.
My community college had an early model about 8 years ago, for the use of the CAD/CAM students, mostly.
The related videos next to that one have all different kinds of demos, if you didn’t notice them.
My Invisalign braces are made this way. A device at the dentist’s makes a scan of my teeth, the computer makes a sequence of how my teeth will can be pushed into place over a 20 month period, and the printer prints about 20 braces that push my teeth in the desired direction.
A friend of me has a 3D printer as a side business. He offers to make scale models of buildings for architects.
At this time 3 D printing is still a technique in search of economically viable applications.
I am seriously considering buying one with the plastic - I have a pool vacuum cleaner from Hayward that is composed of a bunch of little teeny plastic parts that wear down/break all the time. Each piece costs a fortune, and I could probably pay off the cost of the 3D printer in about one or two pool seasons, creating these parts myself.
Not only is it real, but there are two websites where you can send a digital 3d model to them, and they will fabricate the item per your model. In a variety of materials.
Shapeways does exclusively 3-d printing and tends to concentrate more on selling the items that designers have created for them. They have some really awesome stuff like the thorn dice and ImprobableCog’s jewelry
Ponoko does both 2d laser cutting and 3d printing, and is more geared to the creator than the buyer. Their “buy” section isn’t very well set up for surfing.*
*Shapeways could use some fine-tuning as well, but they do have a better design.
The place I used to work would order these all the times for prototypes. Considering the costs and delays for injection molded parts it was a no brainer for prototypes.
Where I used to work, they had one of these as well, for prototyping parts and seeing how they all fit together. Sometimes you just have to get physical. Because they were checking clearances and assemblability and so on, the materials weren’t close to the final real materials for the parts.
And you want some really weird stuff? Apparently they can take suspensions of living cells and print tissues.
This thing is really freaking cool. This sets the bar for replication really, really high I think. Check this out and tell me what you guys think!
Unreal.
That’s an accurate assessment.
I can’t help but wonder reading some of the YouTube comments (I know, I know) if this somehow might be a fake. Off to Snopes I go!
I hope it isn’t fake. I want this thing to be real!
They must be skipping some fairly complex steps in that demo. Somehow they have to add data about the separate components of the object so it doesn’t make the thing item as a one-piece object.
I checked Snopes…nothing. I really want to know how that powder works and what kind of tensile strength the finished product has versus the original wrench.
Like, if you dropped the replicated “plastic” wrench, would it shatter?
Not fake.
Well, not sure about the working tool aspect of it, but a friend’s husband had a turkish spindle printed for her. She says it spins really nicely. (That is a picture of the spindle in question btw).
So far the ‘printing’ materials lack the strength and hardness for most useful applications. These types of devices in various forms have been used in industry for years to create prototypes, often used to produce molds for production. There is work going on for sintered metal depositing that can later be baked to reasonable hardness. In time, practical versions of these things will appear.
Almost 30 years ago, I had a friend who worked for a company that had some rapid-prototyping done. They had a mockup of a hand-piece for a telephone system made, and they had written “ear” with marker on the inside of the ear-piece mockup. They then took it to someplace that digitized it, and produced a prototype with a machine somewhat like this one. When they got the prototype back, they could read the writing on the inside of the piece!
Here’s a link to a really coolstereolithograhy system in action. This technology has been around at least 20 years now.