It may sounds like science fiction, but the printer you buy in the future could be able to produce a real-life object from images on your computer. Full BBC Story:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3126625.stm I rember looking at stuff like this years ago. Think of the scope for modding, you could print fan grills, mouse shells, maybe even a whole case. Pitty is so expensive though .
For that kind of technology it doesn't seems very expensive to me. Of course it's not mainstream intended
Yeah true. I guess printing companies will get hold of them and then you could get them to produce something for you off a cd or something.
Old news. I read about this a year or two ago (well, i think it was this, didn't read the full article there). Uses sprays of hot plastic to build up 3d models for prototypes and stuff. It was costing about £30k I believe then. I think that is quite a reasonable price actually for something like this. Obviously it will probably never get to home user level, but for companies that need this kind of thing, 30k isn't bad.
Yep - these have been around for a while - I first read about them in Wired a couple of years ago, when the 'special' powder they where using was corn starch. This uses exactly the same principle, just with a different build medium. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.05/eword.html?pg=5
Wasn't there a Hewlet Packard commercial to this effect a few years ago? I seem to recall a kid "printing" a football (american type that is) and some dude "printing" a trombone...
The question is; Will it work? This could be rather fun, e.g: "Damn, this fan grill's knackered; i'll have to print a new one."
I think the idea is just to get a kinda look at the finished product really. However, I imagine you'd still be able to get a sound out of it, not a very good sound mind you...
They have one here in one of the departments, it takes ages and then you have to cure the model otherwise it is very fragile. Its also very messy from what I could see, mind you the results are pretty good.
I saw this on TV years ago in that Beyond 2000 program, and I can remember telling all my friends and my boss at the time about it and no-one believed me /me saves url and e-mails it to everyone I know
hmmm...30K for a fan grilll.....for some odd reason I believe it would be cheaper to walk into a store and buy one.....
I REMEMBER BEYOND 2000! I'm sure the old style one they did used a laser to solidify a liquid polymer layer by lare and as it did so, the layers built up into a solid 3D object. *n
I seem to remember some university announcing that they were printing organs (actually just small bits of tissue so far I think) using a similar method to this, they said that they were just using a slightly modified inkjet printer though.
