Apologies if already done…

metal 3d printing

Lots of mention of pointless stuff like nuclear fusion and hitech space travel. No mention of important stuff like cheap titanium cassettes and other such bike parts…

I’ll bet Hope are already looking at this…

there’s a vid of Charge making Ti drop-outs somewhere?

Probably on the Charge site, if I’ve remembered the right company.

Ti is not cheap to work with – moreso to print with rather than machine I’d warrant!

We have one at work. Had it a while. The powder is very expensive. It’s awesome to watch though.

[video]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tkwd2YXNy9I&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dtkwd2YXNy9I[/video]

This is undoubtedly the future. I imagine in a few years people will have these at home. What stops the depressed school nut job printing an AK47? Soon we’ll be able to make anything we can imagine (or download the CAD files for). It’s mind bogglingly exciting. But also a bit scary!

The company I work for make additive manufacturing machines. Watching them print titanium is pretty darn cool. It’s a technology that is very much new to the market but does have a huge amount of potential.

What stops the depressed school nut job printing an AK47?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22421185

not a lot

the guy that sells these actually stood in a room full of folks (well a lot of bigwigs from airbus and boeing and other stuff) and pointed out at the minute ,strength wise its about as good as an investment casting….

remember when your grandad used to go ,computers when i was a lad? its a bit like that ,not ready for the prime time but its coming

ps it will be surpassed by atom rearanging printers where elements are kind of arranged to produce stuff…ill be dead then though so making body parts from a pallette of elements will still be a bit late to print me new body bits

but expect medical folks to take the lead and make metal pretty obsolete

ps it will be surpassed by atom rearanging printers

Some clever bod was talking about these on Radio 4 – potential to just turn the world economy and systems on their head.
If you want something, simply stick some dirt in and wait until your new meal/t-shirt/car/house/plane is printed is the theory.

It suggests printing bearings…give the accuracy and hardness they are made to, this can’t be a realistic example Shirley?

Shirley Bearings Al?

ill be dead then though so making body parts from a pallette of elements will still be a bit late to print me new body bits

printing body parts

It’s not really a cheap process. It’s real advantage is being able to create shapes with internal voids that can’t be machined using traditional machining techniques. Your XX1 cassette would cost less to machine.

I guess the argument goes that printing stuff uses the minimum amount of material, with the least amount of wastage, wereas machining something produces rather a lot of bits that need collecting/processing/recycling to reduce material (and therefore financial) losses?

Most 3d build processes require far more prefer then goes into the part. This can be recycled but there is a limit to his many times you can put the powder through the system.

In our local rag last night:
ASDA 3D scanning and printing

May be gracing their doorstep at some point.

In my other hobby I dabble in a bit of model railways, and it’s huge over there. People can 3D print one off models of all sorts of stuff you can’t buy off the shelf.

Simply upload your design to Shapeways and not only will they print it, but it runs as a webshop so others can print your items too.