Australian Company Creates Even Faster 3D Printer 52
ErnieKey writes: One of the major reasons 3D printing hasn't really caught on is because it's an incredibly slow process. Just last week a company called Carbon3D unveiled a super fast new 3D printing process that utilizes oxygen and light. Now, another company — Gizmo 3D — has unveiled an even faster 3D printing process which is claimed to be more reliable than the process presented by Carbon3D. It can print 30mm in height at a 50 micron resolution in just 6 minutes.
Faster, Pussycat (Score:3)
The real reason (Score:2, Insightful)
I simply don't need a bunch of small plastic tchotschkies, no matter how fast I can print them.
Re: The real reason (Score:2)
Re: The real reason (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is they're too limited. They have to get more capable, not faster, in order to meet my needs. If they can insert circuitry, maybe I can print things that are somewhat more useful. As of right now, I have needed exactly one 3D printed thing (a battery holder for an electronic project, which a friend provided gratis.) But at no point in the last five years have my needs for small plastic things added up to the $300 price of a Simplebot, let alone a printer with better quality, resolution, size, or capabilities.
Maybe you have kids who need thousands of plastic army men. Maybe you are in a business where fabricating prototypes is valuable to you. Great for you, I'm glad you have a use for one. Hopefully you'll help drive volume so the costs come down even further. But as they stand today, they're too expensive for anything I need, and would take up more storage space than I want to waste on a toy.
It has nothing to do with thinking big or small. I'm sorry you can't imagine a scenario different from your own experience.
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How about printing Legos?
Just think of the possibilities!
captcha: whimsies
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Wouldn't be possible. Believe it or not, Lego bricks are produced with a high degree of precision, with tolerances less than 10 micro-metres in order to be able to have the pieces 'snap' together properly (see the Wikipedia Lego article). Currently available 3D printers simply can't do that degree of accuracy. Don't know about these new "faster" printers, but I'd suspect that they've concentrated more on "fast" than "precise".
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You are wrong, it is possible. Short version: home 3d printing doesn't compete with mass produced legos, but printing custom lego pieces is very feasible.
I haven't read the wikipedia article as Wikipedia is only as correct as the contributers (often making it wrong) and as I can directly speak to printing legos (it is something I do) there isn't much point. I have an aging 3d printer (replicator2) and, despite its shortcomings, it is sufficient to print legos. A lot depends on what your expectations are.
Wit
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A company that I work for does a lot of 3D prototyping, but they don't have a 3D printer. They just upload the designs, and get the finished parts 24 hours later by courier. Faster printing time means that the company that's doing the 3D printing can print more designs per day, and lower the cost per item.
Also, if the resolution is high enough, you can do the same thing in production volumes. If your business is selling machines that are made from many different parts, it makes sense to 3D print some parts.
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I'm sorry you can't imagine a scenario different from your own experience.
Your quoting of the parent makes it seem like you're implying that he's wrong, but you pretty much restated his points and did so poorly.
To quote DreamMaster, "Maybe you have kids who need thousands of plastic army men. Maybe you are in a business where fabricating prototypes is valuable to you. Great for you, I'm glad you have a use for one."
And yet, your example was a company that does a lot of 3d prototyping, and yet they simply outsource it! Even that company is unable to justify the purchase!
While we s
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Combining different deposition technologies to manufacture items with multiple materials has been possible for quite some time. The problem is mostly with the patent system in the west. It's a patent minefield of obvious claims by patent holders that aren't even using the tech or are not interested in anything other than prototyping at slow print rates with very high profit margins on the materials. I expect an explosion of the tech in China or after a few more of the patents expire in the west.
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I bet no one ever accused you of thinking big.
You're right. He's thinking small.
Personally, I simply don't need a bunch of big plastic tchotschkies, no matter how fast I can print them.
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Personally, I simply don't need a bunch of big plastic tchotschkies, no matter how fast I can print them.
Maybe you only need one, and you can still benefit from a fast 3D printer.
Say, for instance, you own a classic car, and some stupid piece of plastic breaks in half. You take the two halves to a shop in town that uses a 3D scanner to get the size of the parts, puts them back together in the computer, cleans it up, and then 3D prints a replacement.
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I bet no one ever accused you of thinking big.
Just because we can 3D print small plastic widgets now does not mean that we will be printing cars, helicopters and the like on our home printers in a couple of years time.
There is a difference between welcoming genuine technological advances and living in a fantasy world.
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Great so you figured out that 3D printers are not for you (yet). Others look at them and will cream their pants.
Ever needed a tiny gear or some other plastic part for a one off project .... design it, print it, done.
My 3D printer is like the 9 needle printer I used to have as a kid. Can't wait where it will go in the next 10 years.
Printing functional circuit boards is not required but will elevate 3D printing to the next level.
The 3d printed elephant in the room (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason 3d printing doesn't catch on is because 3d printed products are absolute junk because of the type of plastic that must be used.
It looks horrible, it feels horrible, and it isnt very durable. There's currently not much exciting about it beyond the idea. That's why it doesn't catch on.
If you don't believe me, take an item that you think is incredibly sexy and well designed and go print a 3d protector for it.
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Because, historically, every great leap in innovative technology immediately implemented itself as progress in one or two tries.
Protip: Even the Enterprise's replicator didn't get medium rare ribye perfect for at least two or three attempts.
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If you have a business use for what they can print today, you already have one, and are likely contemplating buying a better one. If you have a personal use for the parts they can print, you probably already own one. And even if you don't have a real use for them, you may have one as a cool toy. But not everyone is going to buy the same toys as you.
Once they get a lot more capable (maybe not Star Trek replicator capable, but substantially better than they are now) then they'll become ubiquitous. Until t
why does that matter? (Score:2)
It doesn't matter to me that 3D printing might begin with a whisper...it just means that I have no use for it *at this time*.
If it gets good enough and cheap enough *then* I'll have a use for it.
Other people may be able to use it now, and more power to them. But for me it's just an expensive toy and if I need something printed I'm better off paying someone to do it on a good/expensive printer out of better-quality materiels.
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You are aware that Star Trek is not surveillance footage sent to us from the future?
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Wat? 3D printed objects can be made using ABS, the exact same plastic used to make Legos.
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LEGO molds are some of the best in general manufacturing. If a 3d printer could make a LEGO brick as good as the original it would imply that you could print virtually any plastic part to sufficient tolerance.
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ABS from ABS varies.
LEGO is made from very high quality material with very low tolerance and variation in manufacturing
no effing way you can 3d print something with comparable quality as LEGO, not with today's 3d printers
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You 'can' print in PLA with traditional printers yes, but not SLA/DLP.
All polymers from photosynthetic resins to date deteriorate quite rapidly when exposed to a few hours of direct sunlight, making it applicable only to indoor and internal component use.
Really, for things to move forward SLA (not DLP) is a good step toward reducing cost of laser based 3D printing methods, but things really need to be moved forward to DMLS/SLS/SLM style printing that sinters/melts powdered deposits of materials (metals, pla
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All polymers from photosynthetic resins to date deteriorate quite rapidly when exposed to a few hours of direct sunlight, making it applicable only to indoor and internal component use.
Seems like all you would have to do is paint the part to solve that problem. Or just dip it in something that blocks UV.
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The commonly used ABS plastic used in FDM machines is very durable, but the orientation of the print matters. You do have to design the prints so that the weak join between layers doesnt experience stress.
I do agree with the looking horrible part, but you can do funky things like acetone dips or acetone vapor to smooth and gloss them.
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And 3d printing and it's cousin,CNC, is currently in widespread use in industry.
Hell, someone mentioned Lego, well Lego uses a 3d printer to rapid prototype new pieces.
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Have you ever looked at the output from a color printer from the 80s? Color dot matrix was absolutely hopeless for anything serious, and ink jet was expensive and not really that much better. Banding was the norm. Of course there were exotic and expensive technologies like dye-sublimation, but they were very expensive. If you are paying attention, that looks a lot like the 3D printing landscape now. The Makerbot style additave printers will probably go away, like dot matrix; and the photosensitave resin one
requires gravity^H^Hs (Score:3, Interesting)
a fatal flaw with these faster printers is that they require gravis (a downward forces) to work. gravity is in very short supply here and no, spinning the station is not an option, i got in trouble for just doing a barrel roll!
-- posted by a Robonaut
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The printer on the ISS is FDM, Gravis Zero is talking about stereolithography printers that use liquid photo-sensitive resins.
We have known how to do this since 2012 (Score:2)
We have known how to do stereolithography really fast since 2012 [usc.edu]. The interesting thing here is that the process has been improved so resolution isn't that bad.