Printing a working 12 inch crescent wrench, name your color, tighten your bolt.

[2on2u]

[Cleita]

1. Why do they call it a printer?

A replicator ala Star Trek would be more like it IMHO.

Otherwise I find it fascinating. However, will end the need for factories and jobs as we know them?

[2on2u]

2. Because it lays down polymers and resin (don't quote me on the polymer) a thin layer at a

time.... it actually prints it out.

Your other question.... the factory of the future will have two employees. A man and a dog. The man will be there to watch the switch. The dog will be there to make sure he doesn't touch it.

[jmowreader]

35. Not true

What's it take to print, say, a wrench? Even assuming we will ever be able to print with metal strong enough for wrenches, it'll take a while.

A conventional forging machine will make hundreds of wrenches in the time it takes to print one.

This technology would end the need to stock millions of parts for cars they don't make anymore; just print a new camshaft for your Corvair instead of stocking a shelf in a warehouse with them. If you need thousands or millions of something, current production methods are better.

[hack89]

45. But if you had one in your garage?

think about the possibilities - just down load a plan from the internet and you can make an endlessly variety of objects. Many won't care to buy such a device but many DIYrs and backyard mechanics would.

[jmowreader]

57. If I had one of those, I'd already have a wrench

I would like to have one. I would use it in a confectionery business.

Imagine you're getting married and your bride-to-be wants a special, personalized souvenir for her shower. I know...how about chocolate bars with the wedding couple's names on them? She would come to me, I would design her bar, she'd sign off on it and I would make them.

But here's the thing: I would never attempt to print fifty candy bars in chocolate, even though I could. I would print three in plastic, vacuform them in acetyl plastic sheet, and pour tempered chocolate into them.

The same process would work for bars sold at high school games...imagine how many Timberwolf Bars or Viking Bars the local high schools could sell.

I've heard all this before with other things new and technological...oh, online shopping will kill stores. In the end, technology does what it does best and traditional ways do what they do best. The average person wouldn't buy one of these machines. Everything he needs is available commercially. A lot of people who bought one would use it until the novelty wore off. Look in the classifieds of your local paper and you'll find plenty of "used once" items - things people bought because they were going to be so cool, then sold once the cool wore off. The great mass of people are not going to buy an expensive tool to make their own 2010 Dodge Dakota PCV valves when it's quicker and cheaper to buy them at AutoZone.

This is a tool for a limited subset of the population.

The first home users that will buy them are guys who have lathes and table saws. They made all the cabinets in their kitchens. They made the salad bowls. They learned metal spinning and made the skillets. Now they can make their own flatware? Yeah buddy, sign them up!

The Jay Lenos among us will be the other home users. They buy cars whose manufacturers went out of the car business 71 years ago today. There are cars from the fifties that won't run for lack of parts. If the Sunbeam Club or the Bricklin Club had downloadable part files, you could make your own carb floats.

And in industry, prototypes and tooling are natural uses.

But building a factory to print over hours what a hydraulic press can make in seconds? Not likely.

[Bok_Tukalo]

63. My Ebay bill for Sunbeam parts alone would pay for it

<OPE>

[immoderate]

3. It doesn't "replicate." It makes a 3-D picture, in a proprietary medium.

Pretty Cool.

--imm

[ashling]

6. They call it a printer because

it is theirs and they can call it any damned thing they want to

[surrealAmerican]

8. It not nearly as cool as a replicator.

It just makes plastic take on different shapes.

[Cleita]

9. Depending on what they are printing, I assume you could change the composition of

the "ink" to be closer to what you want to make to be like the original. Isn't the principle behind the Star Trek replicator that it rearranged the atoms of the waste and trash on the ship?

[surrealAmerican]

10. The technology here is nowhere near that point.

We're talking about fusing plastic, not rearranging atoms.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

75. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Look at human organ printers or skin printers.

[unc70]

12. Not just plastics

Metals, structural elements, experimental organs, faux "meat", lots of strange things in tests.

[progressoid]

36. It can't be a replicator until it can make a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot.

[cloudbase]

4. He's got to feed the dog as well. n/t

[aristocles]

5. The business opportunity here is HUGE!

This will help drive the renaissance of manufacturing in the US over the coming decade.

[Smilo]

7. Awesome

Great job guys.

The possibilities are endless.

[freshwest]

30. +1,000. Just blew me away here. This is great.

[mike_c]

11. what's really crazy is that our dept core facility manager printed one yesterday...

...as the calibration object for our new 3D printer. Not that big though-- his looked like a six inch wrench. But the crazy thing is that it prints in one piece, with the threads, the knurled adjustment screw, and the rack on the sliding mechanism all pre-assembled in position, with the space filled by a different plastic that dissolves out during a sodium hydroxide soak. The adjustment screw was just beginning to turn when he showed it to me. Way cool.

[TheMadMonk]

64. How much "slop" is there in the original? Unhardened powder...

...is left in the gaps. blows out or works out with movement.

[mike_c]

66. I don't know....

It used a stabilization material between working parts that needed to be removed by soaking in hot sodium hydroxide (not a very strong soln though, apparently). It was just beginning to loosen up when he showed it to me. The adjustable parts were not actually moving yet, just beginning to wiggle a little.

[madrchsod]

13. i want one for christmas!

[guardian]

14. Let me know when you can print

one of these!

[2on2u]

16. I don't know if the print heads can handle silicone.... we'll just have to wait and

see.....

[mfcorey1]

38. LOL!!!!

[NYC_SKP]

18. Your post has been alerted upon because somebody thinks, apparently, that it's a violation.

I dare them to post a reply explaining their alert.

I voted to leave it alone.

And here's a beefcake:\\



Now, back to work!

[2on2u]

19. But of course it's a violation, what else could it be? Damn killjoys. n/t

[Systematic Chaos]

29. But..but...don't you understand?? PRINTING TEH CHIKZ R SEXXIST! AND STUFFS!!one!1!!

Oh, and printing teh doodz mite maek u catch teh ghey.

[2on2u]

39. Ooops..... lost in the thread, I thought the OP was alerted..... didn't make sense at the time

but still I jumped right in..... bad brain cells.

[MADem]

40. That old man is a "beefcake?"

Who knew?

I remember, years ago, he had a shitfit when he got hit by a flying goose on a roller coaster!

I'm no expert on beefcake, but I suspect that guy would only be a draw to the "Romance Novel Cover" crowd from about twenty or more years ago!

[Kennah]

37. In the words of Ron White ...

... if I printed out one of those, and the media found out about it, they'd say I'd been fucking it. And, they'd be right.

[seabeyond]

42. it?

point

[Electric Monk]

46. The subject of this thread is 3D printers. Would you call the output of a 3D printer "her"?

counter-point

[seabeyond]

47. would you fuck an "output"? nt

[Electric Monk]

48. I didn't write post #37, but sex toys are quite common, and used by both sexes. nt

[seabeyond]

49. you get minus "point" for that one.

[Electric Monk]

51. I don't know what you're yammering about, but feel free to be offended. You always are. nt

[seabeyond]

55. ah. well, i thought we were beyond knowing, shit, and i was teasing

hence the wink and joke about a minus "point". but, good projection.... with always offended.

[NCTraveler]

62. Many men and women "fuck" the "output" of a manufacturing device. nt.

[jmowreader]

58. It would be just my luck...

...that I'd spend five million to buy a printer big enough to print a live woman, and the first seven or eight wouldn't like me after they were done.

[Agschmid]

15. Hot dang.

This is just getting more and more amazing everyday!

[2on2u]

17. The gears.... the freaking gears work, it just this side of magic. n/t

[Agschmid]

21. Someone above

posted that they print the space between the gears with a material that degrades which then allows the movement, that is the crazy part! I need to read more about that.

[2on2u]

22. Saw that, it gets washed out by some medium, forgot what it was but when I mention this to

people at work they look at me and say, you'll believe anything you see on the internet, and they mean it.... it's hard to get some people to come up to speed without them actually holding, touching and operating stuff that defies what would be considered normal I guess.

[NYC_SKP]

23. I have a 3D printer at school, allow me to explain:

I also have a couple of small crescent wrenches we printed, they don't work as well as the real thing but are nonetheless amazing.

There are technologies for metal printing, a form of sintering, that costs more than the ABS plastic printers that run from $1,500 to $30,000 and more.

The support material is different from the printing material, and after the entire wrench is printed, you need to take the whole mess, the final parts and support material, and soak it in a hot bath of lye, often attached to the printing unit.

It usually takes overnight to dissolve the support material and sometimes you have to use dental tools to pull the stuff out of cavities, but it does eventually go away.

A better form of printing is stereolithography, I hope to get an SL printer soon. No support material involved.

Here's something I've printed:

[Agschmid]

24. Thanks for the explanation!

The geared heart is pretty amazing too. I am going to have to get to a trade show soon so I can see these in action.

[wtmusic]

33. Amazing

[trailmonkee]

44. sweet!!

[Earth_First]

20. One would think that with the 'doubling effect' of technology in the next 50 years

that things such as poverty, homelessness and starvation would be a thing of the past.

Looking at things like this makes me wildly hopeful.

[HiPointDem]

27. One would have thought that a hundred years ago too. In fact, a lot of people did. But the

poverty rate doesn't really have a lot to do with how technologically advanced civilizations are.

There's a good argument to be made that technological advancement 'invented' poverty, actually.

[Scootaloo]

28. Only if it's distributed properly

Which sadly, isn't all that likely

[closeupready]

25. I'd like to know the carbon footprint of a process like this,

the energy needed.

but yes, it's fascinating.

[chalky]

34. I was wondering if the printed items were recyclable.

The video kept mentioning taking a printer into space and printing tools as needed. But what about when they're no longer needed? Would you be able to recycle the tools, or would you end up trapped in a space station, buried in the clutter you've printed in the past?

[Posteritatis]

69. Different printers use different media, so it'd depend on that

I read about one that could work with cheese, though I wouldn't want to clean the thing.

[liberal N proud]

26. 3D printers are amazing

I saw an airplane engine that was printed, the prop even rotated.

[Historic NY]

31. I belong to a Revolutionary War group, one of those would make ..

extending the original moulds we use possible. They are so old the hand work involved to clean up the casting is crazy. Just for making repairs.

[drm604]

32. Will we eventually have a DMPA to complement the DMCA?

I use DMPA to stand for Digital Millennium Patent Act. Patent holders will be desperate to stop individuals from illegally copying their patented objects. I can imagine patent violating scan files being distributed illegally by torrent.

[Posteritatis]

68. I expect these to get pretty brutally regulated

I'd be only slightly surprised if there was some kneejerk attempt at an outright ban or mandatory licensing, especially after the first time someone does something particularly stupid with one and the news gets a hold of it.

Of course, at the same time, rolling your own designs is pretty easy for the existing ones, especially if they can already read numerous existing 3D/CAD formats. I imagine there's going to be quite a few companies thinking they can get into business selling schematics for one simple thing or another who will get completely bypassed by what's already publicly available in that department.

[Tracer]

41. The guy explaining the process ...

... was the homeowner of last year's This Old House remodel.

He had designed and printed out a completed model of his antique house and the addition that was to be built.

The house model was incredibly detailed, and I was boggled to learn of this "printing" process.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

74. I too was boggled when I first saw the episode.

I sat everyone I know down and made them watch it.

Here it is. It's a little better explanation of the process:

HBS,

30 year fan of This Old House

[trailmonkee]

43. But can the 3D Printer, Print a 3D Printer?

[MadHound]

50. Oh boy, another energy hogging, pollution spewing way to make plastic crap.

Really now, plastic wrenches, how long are those going to last? But hey, they're cheap to make and as the price of these things goes down, more and more people will use them.

Meanwhile by doing so we will continue to burn more and more energy, and cause more and more pollution.

Just go out and buy a good set of metal wrenches, they'll last your lifetime or more.

[NoOneMan]

52. Its appalling that as the earth dies, we get hard-ons for machines that hurry the process

This thread looks like an iPhone X announcement.

[reformist2]

53. It might be the "next big thing," but most people will just end up having lots more plastic junk.

[SalviaBlue]

54. Incredible!

[uponit7771]

56. ******3D Metal Printer******* will print metal instal of resin plastic. This is new ish

[TeeYiYi]

59. It won't be long before we'll all have one. Remember these?...

First personal calculator:


First portable computer:


First portable cell phone:




I remember them. Prohibitively pricy albatrosses, all.

Now I have numerous old (not that old) calculators, cell phones and desktop/laptop computers strewn between old boxes in my garage.

I use a smartphone that can perform the functions of all three...and then some. By a mile.

TYY

[Octafish]

60. ''I can keep the tool?''

Incredible!

Thank you, 2on2u!

[TeeYiYi]

61. "I can haz tool?" lulz ...nt

TYY

[TheMadMonk]

65. And a thought. A foundry with one of these, could make...

Dies on Monday.
Sand moulds Tuesday.
Pour on Wedneday.
Break out and clean up on Thursday.
Deliver on Friday.

Any part ever cast in metal can be cast again. Cheaply enough to make it worthwhile.

[curlyred]

67. We had one of these in for a demo

At work. I have to say they are pretty sweet. Expensive and slow as hell. But amazing. Printed out a working salt shaker.

[greyl]

73. Ones that print with ABS plastic aren't that expensive, I don't think

A few here at Amazon for under $1500.

An elegant solution for replacing lost pen caps.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

76. When I first saw this on This Old House (post #74) I thought how cool it would be...

... to be able to print a full size home.

Maybe one day a truck will pull up to the job site and print entire sections of a home or components.

Or custom furniture? Maybe all that plastic furniture on the show Space 1999 was printed.

[greyl]

78. Entire rows of homes could be built this way.

Huge versions with many different "print heads", moving on rails.
(saw it on some PBS show several months ago)

edit: this one, I think:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2303503361

[Hassin Bin Sober]

80. Fuckers stole another one of my ideas!

Btw, I invented the EZ pass too!!!

[delta17]

70. Pretty cool

Lurker here. This is really cool, but I don't know how that wrench would hold up in actual field use. I have a breaker bar that I use to break torque on rusted/painted on bolts that my impact won't. It was around $15 and it does a great job. I just don't see actual metal tools being replaced by printed ones.

[hrmjustin]

71. Welcome to DU and I hope you enjoy the site.

[delta17]

72. Thanks! nt

[jonthebru]

77. How about,

if you had some old gadget with a few broken or worn parts. With this device you could repair said gadget by "printing" a new part.
Granted, you would need the old part and may need to fix it on screen after scanning it, but the idea is really exciting.
There are things it could not do, like springs or weighty items, but if for example you could infuse electrical paths, wiring so to speak through the part, you could invent new ways of doing manufacturing.
This is only the beginning.
I have seen a few videos on these printers, this one is the best cause it shows more of how it actually works.
Its a crazy world.

[patrice]

79. Wow! I've heard of these printers, but couldn't imagine what they were talking about.

Thanks for posting, 2on2u!

Fascinating.