I was at a tradeshow the other day, and there was a company there called Z Corp www.zcorp.com who had 3d printers.
basically, you submit a CAD drawing, and this thing prints layers of powder and bonding agent, and you pull your 3d piece of work (even in colour) out of the machine. It feels like solid plastic, and is a complete representation of your Cad drawing.
I put this in the RSU forum as I think it would be very handy tool for people who are designing unicycle things: seats, frames, BC plates, anything! Perhaps you want to build a one off to bring to a larger manufacturing place and only want to spend a little on a 100% scale model or something… (there are places you can print these from, you don’t need the actual printer)
this prints in full colour to exactly what you made in CAD, and can even do things like flexible hoses, it may be the coolest thing I have ever seen!
edit: looks like i accidentally put it in the JC forum…
I used one of these printers (commonly known as a rapid prototyping machine) a few weeks ago to create a wing (NACA4318 if you’re interested) for testing. There are several differnt types, mine uses a plastic wire that is melted and deposited by a printing head,a bit like building up something with a glue gun. The advanatges are that the 12 pressure tappings can be built in to the model in a way that would be almost impossible otherwise. Other common types are those which use a laser to harden a liquid layer by layer to create a solid object, and those that cut slices of paper and then stack them together to create the 3D object. They’re really not cheap though, the machine I used was more or less bottom of the range (in terms of model accuracy and speed of production) and the material to produce a small wing cost over £25. The machine itself was several thousand quid.
Unfortunately due to the materials used these devices aren’t usually suitable for making working prototypes as they are far too weak. While a rapid prototype gives you a good feel of the physical size and shape of an object you couldn’t, for instance, try out some BC plates before you got them made in a more suitable material.
The cheapest one of these machines I’ve ever seen was basically a vinyl cutter that cut out the layer shape in adhesive-backed vinyl and stuck it onto the model, basically building the 3d object out of thin layers of pseudo-stickytape. Pretty cheap too, only £7,000-10,000. When compared to the cheapest alternatives (anywhere from £25,000 to £100,000 for an entry level model using various technologies) its certainly a better way for people to start in the business.
The fun with 3d printers begins when you couple them up to a high-end 3d scanner, making, in affect, a rather expensive 3d photocopier. you stick an object in, and out comes a plastic 3d representation of its shape. This would be very useful for small replacement parts, or just for fun, if ur mate has something you would like one of (e.g. a keyring, or something else small and plastic) you can instantly have a copy of it. Very cool.
There are also ‘printers’ that use lasers to solidify a gel that’s inserted into the printer. I know that some colleges have these, and it costs about $9,000 USD for a 1’x1’x1’ chunk of gel. It’d be fun!
There are even some that use sugar and other very fine particles (I’m guessing alongside water) to create the object, thus creating a non toxic (edible even) model.
i can see it now
guy1-i forgot my lunch … do you have anything to eat??
guy2-ohh me too … lets eat those models that we messed up on … i put them in the fridge !!
but really that is awesome … does it do structural models too… or just production models?
