Computers were pretty clunky, too, at the beginning. We are seeing the very earliest moments of the Star Trek replicator. When the market smells a demand, we'll get the pretty you are looking for.
I was actually referring to the produced piece that came out of it. It seems to have rather poor resolution, and there are what appear to be stringy anomalies and uneven portions. The machine itself is not relevant to me. I don't care if that looks clunky. But if the produced piece is a clunky looking mess, that's a problem.
Ah, "clunky" tends to be used to refer to ungainly machines, which is one reason most people reading your original post will assume you're discussing the aesthetics of the printer and not its products.
The other is of course that the title of the submission is about the printer, so using "it" without further clarification will not be read as referring to something mentioned only in the article.
You might be surprised at how much of a clunky mess most plastic cases look during the manufacturing process before they move in the production line to the finishing step.
I would say, don't judge a book by its color. There are plenty of examples of ultra-refined models to be printed by these types of machines on http://thingiverse.com/ .. if you really want to evaluate the 'finished nature' of the models coming from this scene, you ought to look at a few more examples ..
Many 3D printed parts have a great deal of support material printed along with the "core" part. This provides stability and is removed during finishing.
When is someone going to develop a quality desktop 3D printer? I know I would be willing to pay many times the price of a Makerbot for a proper printer.
The RepRap Project is an initiative aimed at creating a largely self-replicating machine which can be used for rapid prototyping and manufacturing: http://www.reddit.com/r/reprap
Both are different projects, but relate to 3D printing.
I think you can get a "real" desktop 3D printer for about $5K these days. But the consumer build-it-yourself designs are doing reasonably well, and actually give very, very good results - the catch is you have to be willing to put a lot of time in.
I guess I would also note that these guys are all kind of headed in the direction of competing with the "real" desktop 3D printers, but yeah, they won't be there for a while. I wrote some further thoughts here: http://justindunham.net/2011/08/where-is-open-source-3d-prin...
Does anyone make useful things with these? How come the article doesn't give the accuracy and resolution or are people just printing crude shower curtain rings really quickly?
How much time does it take? What are the materials cost? What are the operating costs? How much does the machine cost? Just trying to do a bit of break-even calculation and figure out what the profitability point is on a per-item basis... since I might do the same [grin]
back of the envelope, a thingomatic is $1300. If you get it working well, it'll happily print for days unattended. electricity and plastic i'd guess is less than a buck an hour. ABS plastic is dirt cheap. less than $20 per pound, stuff you print weighs a fraction of an ounce.
Not really. .25 mm resolution, accuracy is higher, .05 mm is likely. Depends on the threaded rod, belt tension etc. In general the accuracy is far higher than the uncertainty in the melted plastic coming out of the extruder.
I built a cupcake and, as a hobby, it is totally worth the money. I don't think i'll build another, but i'll keep mine running as long as i can.
abs sands well, it takes paint, there are very few things you can't rough out with this sort of tool. I think the design software just isn't there yet. blender is weird. art of illusion crashes. openscad is writing code in a broken language. sketchup doesn't support the correct formats out of the box. There's still a bunch of rough edges.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 54.4 ms ] threadI'm not sure what "clunky mess" means or how device asthetics correlate to "leap[s]" (in ability?) in 3D printing.
The other is of course that the title of the submission is about the printer, so using "it" without further clarification will not be read as referring to something mentioned only in the article.
I would say, don't judge a book by its color. There are plenty of examples of ultra-refined models to be printed by these types of machines on http://thingiverse.com/ .. if you really want to evaluate the 'finished nature' of the models coming from this scene, you ought to look at a few more examples ..
The RepRap Project is an initiative aimed at creating a largely self-replicating machine which can be used for rapid prototyping and manufacturing: http://www.reddit.com/r/reprap
Both are different projects, but relate to 3D printing.
I built a cupcake and, as a hobby, it is totally worth the money. I don't think i'll build another, but i'll keep mine running as long as i can.
abs sands well, it takes paint, there are very few things you can't rough out with this sort of tool. I think the design software just isn't there yet. blender is weird. art of illusion crashes. openscad is writing code in a broken language. sketchup doesn't support the correct formats out of the box. There's still a bunch of rough edges.
He's using light from a projector to harden liquid resin.