3D printing (or additive manufacturing as it's more commonly called today) has actually been around since 1984 with a process called stereolithography. IIRC, the concept of AM was originally thought of in 1965.
We use it at work for prototyping of injection moulded parts without going through the HUGE cost of getting a mould made up.
I've seen people print parts to create a template for aluminium castings. Not CNC work but metal and just about doable at home. A 3D printer is in my 'if I win lotto' modding list - along with a CNC machine, real PCB making gear, good size workshop and a tea maid.
and if you make yourself a 3d printer, you can then use it to make another 3d printer, I was reading about it a few years ago, some opensource project.
Indeed - RepRap as posted by IanW. I nearly bought one, but c. £500 for the kits is rather a lot more than I thought.
3D printing has been done for years. (1986 stereolithography was invented) Metal is rather more complex but I have seen it done. There are three methods at the moment SLS or SLM or EBM (selective laser scintering, selective laser melting and Electron Beam Melting) Basically you have a bed of metal powder and you melt a pattern into it. then you recoat with metal powder and repeat. Main companies doing this atm are MTT Renishaw, and EOS that I know of.
There you go Nexxo. New titanium jaw bone made in 3D printer. Michael Mosleys recent series "Front Line Medicine" on BBC 2 featured a skin printer that would be ready for use in 2013 and the inventor of that showed a kidney he had printed.
I am just waiting for the tech to progress. Eventually we should be able to dump old unwanted items into the 'printer' and it will break down the atoms, reassemble them and output the desired object. By then I expect I will be able to download a car or anything... also looking forward to the realization of alchemy and the destruction of civilization as we know it.
There's one in the machine workshop of the engineering department at UUJ. I've seen it in use - saw some of a 12 hour print process for a plastic housing. I never got to use it, but seeing as I now have full access to the workshop two days a week, I could if I wanted to!
We can do titanium, Ti6Al4V, CoCr, 316L, 17-4PH, tooling steels, Al10SiMg, copper alloys, super alloys, gold, silver and no doubt some other metals/alloys I'm not aware of.
Well, yeah you can print in many different metals, and the overall cost of production ends up being less than if you machine a very intricate piece from billets, but the required equipment makes it far from achievable at home unfortunately. It's also worth noting for those who aren't aware that 3D printing metal parts is a part specific process only, and is intended to reduce machine time and swarf waste (of which there is usually none) on intricate parts. Yes, it's quicker to 3D print a massively detailed decorative light fitting than machine it from a massive billet of material, but 3D printing is no match for machining volume turned parts where tolerances and strength are of the utmost importance, and a part can be produced in a matter of seconds or a couple of minutes.
Tolerances, no. Strength however, you may want to look into. Owing to the nature of the process(es), mechanical strengths can exceed forged materials.
Well from what I've seen of metal 3D printing, the material which is printed is infused with another metal to add strength and from there it can be hardened and tempered, but does the nature of the process technically make it an alloy? Mechanical strength is a pretty broad stroke, are we talking about tensile strength, toughness, hardness, shear strength? If it's more than one of those I'll be amazed and educated. I've been under the impression that forged billets + machining is the cream of the crop as far as shear strength and toughness are concerned. In my experience, metal casting is a process used for cheaper mass produced parts and one in which certain material properties are considered much less important. I think 3D printing is capable of producing more detail than casting as well. It all depends on the type of casting involved and the material being cast. The most complex thing I've ever seen being cast (not in real life, unfortunately) was the V8 block of a Ferrari engine. Sounds pretty complicated, but 3D printed metal parts can be insanely intricate, much more so than something like an engine block.
If the show the op is talking about was that home of the future thing then the printer they featured is very expensive, starting at $19,900 according to their website. http://www.objet.com/news_events/2_new_desktop_3d_printers_euromold/ Not quite priced for the home market just yet. Also they love to talk about this home manufacturing with their example being a pen on the show, you still need to buy the internal parts. So with something more complex like a lamp your average consumer is going to have to buy a light fitting and wire a plug and assemble all the parts together. Why are they going to go to all that effort? I can see it working really well for technically minded people like on this forum but I find it hard to believe the average shopper will embrace this tech until we have something like the star trek machine that can make anything fully assembled.
