3D Printing

My dentist has one that starts with a cube of ceramic, and uses a couple of milling bits to remove material, resulting in a crown or inset piece of replacement tooth. I watched it making a piece for me - took about 20 mins. (System is called CEREC.)

I remember thinking something similar when one of the astronauts demonstrated emptying a beaker of water out in mid-air in zero gravity, pinging the droplets about and letting them combine (might have been on Spacelab).

At the end, he threw a towel over them, but I expect some smaller ones probably got away.

Thats CNC milling , subtractive manufacture, which has alot to commend it , but without going over 3 axis overhangs are a problem.

Toner is like soot - if a filter is fine enough to catch it, it will very quickly block it. A standard vacuum cleaner bag can't filter toner powder and just blows most of it out in the exhaust, making it air-borne, which is bad news from a health point of view, and it's explosive in air (ignited by low level static created in vacuum cleaner pipework).

I have a feeling that is precisely what a lot of people will be doing...

As others have said, that *ain't* a 3D printer - it's a CNC milling machine!

Well, it's not 'gravity-less', it's in free-fall.

Cheers

Given the materials that can be 3D printed, has anyone found a practical use for home 3D printing?

Beautiful.

(Talking of different induction / needle valve techniques) I still have one of these in my catamaran:

It used a rotary valve rather than a ported crankshaft.

Cheers, T i m

Gear wheels, especially internal gears; figures for 16mm garden railway at a fraction of the price of the BusyBodies range.

Definitely making scale model parts. Or moulds for them. Prototyping knobs and so on too.

sweet. I did visual models of lots of engines for fun.

Did you ever do an aero 4/ by any chance as I'd love to see that?

OOI, how long would it take to create the example you linked above?

Cheers, T i m

Never did a 4 stroke no

Takes and hour or two to do a motor as a visual more if internal detail is wanted. Of course not strictly to scale..

Shame. I'd love to have one, even just to hold and look at. ;-)

It's the same with these cycle frame couplings:

Engineering pron to me ... a delight to hold, use and look etc. ;-)

Ok thanks. Not as long as I imagined, even for someone who knows what they are doing.

Maybe not but it still looks fine. ;-)

I love cutaway / exploded diagrams as well as for me a picture has always been worth more than 1000 words . Daughter seems to now be appreciating the times we have shared doing practical stuff and mentioned she is starting to see things like an X-ray, (as I have done for years now).

Do you have any cutaway / sectioned images you created that you would care to share?

Cheers, T i m

I first came across 3D printing about 10 years ago, when I needed some plastic parts moulded. The moulder produced prototypes by 3D printing, which, while not cheap at the time, was a lot less expensive than having a set of soft mould tools made.