Nice little toy

[John Williamson]

The "Thing-O-Matic"

[Andy]

I want one too !!

[JW]

Surely if John gets one first, then he can just makerbot us all another one? ;-)

[Bob Eager]

+1

[Andy Dingley]

A credit card and a chat with Shapeways is much simpler and better quality, IMHE.

[Tim Watts]

Andy Dingley ( [e-mail]) wibbled on Tuesday 11 January 2011

13:03:

I want my Star Trek replicator!

And my own transporter so I can just beam the earth out of the trench for the drains and beam it back in afterwards!

[Nightjar]

Bignell

[Frank Erskine]

I read that as:- "my own trainspotter".

[Tim Watts]

Frank Erskine ( [e-mail]) wibbled on Tuesday 11 January

2011 15:28:

Come to Clapham Jnc - sure there are some you can rent!

[Andy Dingley]

Nice little video of someone setting up their Shopbot

[Adam Aglionby]

[Andy Dingley]

diminishing spiral. If you have a copy of Papanek's "Design for the Real World" (top book), they're in there. Neat little mechanical analogue computer to control the shape generation too.

[Tim Watts]

Adam Aglionby ( [e-mail]) wibbled on Tuesday 11 January 2011 22:22:

also

A robot shat my house:

Or: Make my kitchen a Kleine Bottle:

Great for a mock castle, secret passages no problem.

[BartC]

a solid lump of material, and remove bits by machining from it.

The makebot and reprap seem to be additive processes: start with nothing and add molten plastic. It sounds a bit like building something with a glue gun.

I couldn't quite get how they do overhanging bits with that, nor how they achieve the accuracy and finish of machined parts.

(It did however remind me of Primo Levi's 'Mimer' gadget in his book of short stories 'The Sixth Day'. This is a 3D copier that can duplicate any solid object, including living things. But the Makerbot and friends seem to be a little way off that at the moment.)

[Andy Dingley]

Yes. A slightly smaller diameter glue gun, squirting dots.

There are several ways. One of the simplest is to not have overhangs. As it's CAD, it's not hard to rotate it, so that what was previously a tricky overhang is now an easy upward spike. It's also capable of forming overhangs, so long as they're within a shallow upward cone from the existing shape. There are also other tricks, such as building on top of a foam former, which can be removed later. You can even make hollow boxes, and hollow boxes with things inside them (ship in a bottle style).

Simply, they can't. This is why I abandoned my order for a Makerbot early last year. I just can't think what I want to make so badly in Lumpovision.

Here's an interesting piece - lost ABS casting in bronze. The texture of this is mostly due to the ABS printing, not the metal casting afterwards.

[marpate1]

I have a RapMan ...

and can vouch that the output is pretty impressive. Not as good as moulded items but reasonable. Apparently to smooth an item made from ABS you just dip it in acetone for a couple of secs and then leave to dry - I've not tried this yet.

I printed a female torso off

my sons took to work and cast in solid bronze ... it looks so much better in life than the photo portrays but it is impressive what can be made.

Oh, just to whet your appetite a little more, have a look at this ... printed as is with no assembly required ...

Mark

[BartC]

That's a good idea. If they can print with several different 'inks' at the same time (I've no idea if they can at the minute), then the whole thing can printed as a solid block (or perhaps just the awkward bits), with the hollow sections formed in a material that can be washed (or melted, etc) out in a separate process later.

[Adam Aglionby]

Shapeways are a division of Philips, guess its an interesting way of getting market research on what people will actually use 3d printing for. Which will hopefully expand beyond D20`s and coathooks... Though it should do with range of materials now on offer :-)

See what you mean about finish on things like Makerbot and Reprap, first thing thought of with 3d printing is custom gears, but looks like that is not yet acheivable.

Can see the Chinese moving in on this market soon, few sub 1000 quid Chinese C02 laser cutter/engravers about, X/Y/Z table with heated extruder should be straightforwarfd for them with a massive internal market for such items...

Exciting times:-)

Cheers Adam

[Andy Dingley]

One of the drawbacks is that there _isn't_ a good market for 3D printed items at present.

"Stuff" today is cheap, because it comes out of a vast factory in vast volume. Nothing sells for a reasonable price any more - it's either dirt cheap, which reduces margins all the way through the supply chain, such that the only two profitable businesses left are being Shanghai General Products to make it, or else Walmart to sell it, and everyone else goes to the wall. The price bracket above this is the stratospheric pricetag, such as snake-oil audio cables. There's nothing left in the middle.

A 3D printer, and to some extent a small CNC mill, is slow to produce its output. It just can't compete with moulding, if you can afford the capital cost (i.e. production volume) for a more expensive machine and bulk-run tooling.

Assuming that you can mould a range of plastic widgets to order, what do you do with them? Replacement radio knobs is one thing - the '40s radio collectors just love Makerbots, but that's an inherently small- volume high-ticket market. You can make Collectible Action Figures (CAF), which have become a standing joke amongst Makers. Yes, you can now make figurines of Han shooting first, shooting second, shagging Leia or even shagging an Ewok. But just how many Star Wars hipsters are there to buy these things? Besides, Tentacle-Head Barbiethulhu is funnier. Coat hooks? Yes, everyone moulds a coathook. But I bought my last coathooks, and they were 50p for brass ones, so I don't see competition there.

In the end, the most popular part to make on a Makerbot are more bits for Makerbots - filament reel holders, that rather impressive one- piece moulded ball bearing. Maybe the RepRap has it right after all? The reason for self-fabbing your machine isn't to make the machines more easily, it's to give them something to do _after_ you've made them.

I'm designing a custom gear project (cycloidal reduction gears!) just at the moment, but it's milled from brass and Delrin, not moulded.

[Adam Aglionby]

Need for some individuality does mean that SGP won`t be able to turn out products that suit everyone all the time , but as yousay the cost of even small modification makes it stratospherically priced, audiofools being a special exception.

Kind of see Makerbot at the ZX80 kit level of 3d printing development, much bigger machines like Z Corps can produce output suitable for producing production moulds and tooling. Speed of development will hopefully accelerate as tools spread which is Repraps idea.

Chinese have reduced time to marke tfast already, the dream of 3d scanner and 3d printer as a replicator sure exercised a few minds in the Far East, keeping selling people things relies on making the one they`re holding `last weeks model`.

Japanese started copying things, transistor radios, funny pressed metal motorbikes, cars with a heater as standard...

ZX80 suffered from the `very nice dear , but what does it do?` problem as well.

They`re a bit like Everest ` because its there` because you can get geek points for having a 3D printer on your desk ;-)

Cheers Adam