3D Printer

[Craig Mac]

Imagine the possibilities of this bad boy. Probably not exactly affordable for the consumer just yet. I say 10 years and it will be.

[YOUTUBE]ZboxMsSz5Aw[/YOUTUBE]

 

[keinreis]

at my last job we use to get prototype products made in a similar process. It was cool that the engineers could test, and make changes without having to have mold changes done.

 

[KickinD]

We had one of those at college, but I never got around to using it for my architectural models. I did use the laser cutter which was a ton of fun. I even prototyped some r/c car frames and parts with it.

A friend of mine actually used these guys to make a model for a presentation. They are pretty cool too.

http://www.zebraimaging.com/products/digital-prints

 

[daniyal]

Super sweet! Can't wait to get my hands on one.

 

[NCost]

I've used one a few times and have customers that do all the time. They're pretty cool and the price has dropped significantly since when they were first developed.

 

[bugbear]

MakerBot Industries http://www.makerbot.com/ has em for under $1500. We had one last year at the HacKid Conference in Boston http://www.hackid.org. They used it to make parts for a second MakerBot and put it together. Here's a short clip of it making a pyramid http://www.twitvid.com/7INYP

 

[ChazHollywood]

Guy in my office built one of these: http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

The plans and software are all free and open source. There's various ways to buy or have the parts made. They're trying to design it so as many of the parts as possible can themselves be printed.

Nifty project but it looks like a whole mess of time and effort at this point.

-Charles

 

[KickinD]

There are several websites that you can upload a model to and have them make and send to you. Don't remember the names of them though.