Whos got one?

any experiences

really good article in last months dirt about the Edge bikes guy using one to make a bike frame

even an article in the guardian today
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/30/3d-printing-mainstream-technology

is say this one worth it, how big are the biggest items you can make
hmmmmm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CUBIFY-CUBE-PRINTER-PRICE-QUALITY/dp/B00BLBZESA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367430740&sr=8-1&keywords=3d+printer

used one, based on powder which is a brilliant thing as it will print in colour and the waste is minimal. but sealing the powder afterwards is a royal pain in the bum (they have brought out a new powder which can be sealed by spraying water on to it but it’s a grand a tub).
also used a plastic based one which is good and can make objects which are more resilient and can be made to flex or articulate.
i love the possibilities and they are pretty much endless.

We have some at work, and we get stuff made externally via shapeways. The stuff we get done by shapeways is pretty impressive, the stuff from the larger machines at work is okish but a bit hit and miss. The stuff from the small cheap printers at work is pretty rubbish, good enough to say ‘look it prints 3d!’, but not good enough to be of practical use, or more precisely, of practical use to me. I guess it depends on what you want to make, but don’t expect a good surface finish.

The potential is there but many off the uses talked about in the press are still the stuff of tomorrows world.

I was thinking about front fenders, would the ABSon the cheap ones be tough enough for something like this?

Why bother printing a mudguard when a moulded one will be easier & cheaper to make?
3D will be useful for just that: complex 3D shapes. I see the main nearterm market being sintered metal objects.

Eldest daughters school has a comparatively expensive one….. some of the stuff they’re producing is pretty cool.

Its not a new technology I was playing with and extruded ABS one at uni 15 years ago to make prototypes and visualization models and TBH that’s primarily what they are still used for.

For the most part it’s still far too expensive and limited to replace injection moulding in most consumer products.

TBH “printed products” are a nice idea but some way off of being generally viable.

If you fancy building your own Google “reprap” and have a poke about on the sites that turns up, realistically you can make a small rapityper for about £350-£500ish but in some ways a CNC router is a more useful tool to build…

http://www.thingiverse.com/

is an absolutely fasinating site to have a look around on. As well as RepRap there is also Makerbot.

I thought they were for prototypes and such, rather than production line stuff.

I saw a programme on television quite a few years back focusing on a guy who’d, quite literally, smashed his face to pieces in a car crash. With the use of medical imaging technology and a 3D printer they produced exact copies of the bone fragments allowing them to perfectly produce the metalwork that would hold everything back together whilst familiarising the surgeons with what they’d find when they went in and allowing them to practice reconstructing the face before hand; very, very clever stuff!

If you want to make mudguards like that, a carbon fibre kit would be a better approach than a 3D printer .
See Lightman’s CF football boot project for more details…!

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

Charge bikes use 3D printing for rear dropouts

http://chargebikes.com/products/freezer-ti-with-3d-dropouts/

I thought they were for prototypes and such, rather than production line stuff.

That’s what we use ours for – an extruded ABS job but it does use alternative colours of ABS so you can make functioning and reasonable looking components too – a few “might” have made it onto various bikes/kayaks/campervan projects of mine!

I was speaking to someone from a white goods manufacturer recently. Apparently there is a law that ensures the manufacturers of white goods keep spare parts warehoused for 10 years after the item ceases production. This creates significant storage costs. They are actively looking to transfer from warehousing obsolete stock to where appropriate a hard drive full of stl files and a row of 3D printers as a cheaper and less wasteful solution.

Apparently some guy just made fireable gun with one!

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