For all you engineers out there
- Thread starter CyPride
- Start date
One of my clients (Strstasys) is the leading manufactures of 3D printers. They are growing like wildfire and selling their printers to almost every high school and college in the nation. I really think it won't be long before everyone has one in their home.
If you don't have something at home you need, just go online, buy the design/drawing and print what you need instead of having to rerun to the store to buy it....would be awesome
If you don't have something at home you need, just go online, buy the design/drawing and print what you need instead of having to rerun to the store to buy it....would be awesome
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The printer part has been around for a long time. They have had rapid prototypes of CAD models out of a variety of materials from ABS to cornstarch. The new part of this (at least to me) is the scanner to model.
A couple of issues that I see are for metals you can create a casting, but how do you know what kind of treatment was put on the original part for hardening? If you need to harden or machine an edge, you need to account for that with extra material. They didn't mention on the part that Jay was holding how they took the plastic part, created a metal cast from that, yet still were able to machine the surface without ending up with too little material.
Also, I'm calling BS on the adjustable wrench. No way was that scanned and then "printed". That can be done from a 3D model, but that's been able to be done for a while.
A couple of issues that I see are for metals you can create a casting, but how do you know what kind of treatment was put on the original part for hardening? If you need to harden or machine an edge, you need to account for that with extra material. They didn't mention on the part that Jay was holding how they took the plastic part, created a metal cast from that, yet still were able to machine the surface without ending up with too little material.
Also, I'm calling BS on the adjustable wrench. No way was that scanned and then "printed". That can be done from a 3D model, but that's been able to be done for a while.
homer - i too would like to see that wrench made, first hand - as i am pretty skeptical myself.
That wrench isn't a big deal. Makerbot shows a ton of examples like that wrench.
MakerBot Replicatorâ„¢ - MakerBot Industries
MakerBot Replicatorâ„¢ - MakerBot Industries
I don't doubt its possible to create that wrench from a CAD assembly. I question whether its possible to be done from a scan of a wrench. It's impossible to get a model of the interaction of the screw mechanism from a surface scan.