Saw this today and thought it might interest some people…
The printer shown in this clip is Z Corporation’s ZPrinter 450. The Z450 can take a model on a computer and print it out in 3D. The examples shown in the video include a life-like reproduction of a melon and a model of a house (including the interior of the building!). At a price of just under 40 thousand dollars, this printer is “makes color 3D printing accessible to everyone.”
It is called rapid prototyping.There is a guy that sells a basic kit that you can build at home for about 2500.00.The web site is fabathome.org I think.
Several community colleges in my area offer stereo-lithography services like this for a small fee to businesses, a lot cheaper than buying the equipment. For those who aren’t familar with this stuff, stereo-lithography makes a soft plastic (usually stryo) 3D model in any scale using a laser etching method. You first must have a 3D CAD model of the part, but then it’s as easy as sending them the file and paying. The model is usually done in less than an hour. I’ve seen a few machines that could do EPS shortboards (can’t cut stringers), but I don’t know what the operating costs would be.
I heard of something like this several years ago, believe it was used by BMW(?) for development purposes.
Basically the idea as I recall was to lay down a layer of some powdered material, then pass a laser over it. Where there was to be a solid, the laser would fire, and fuse powder at that point. Repeat until part is built. Wonder what the finish would be.
Well, interesting, but we’re in busines, such as it may be, for a while yet.