3D Color Printing As Common As a Wooded Lot Tick Infestations. It’s Coming.

• al dean
  Seesmic video reply from Disqus.
• Rod_Uding
  A video is worth 10,000 words.
• Kevin Quigley
  Al always gets to play with the best toys!
  
  Yoou know Josh I've been thinking for years "this year I'll buy a 3D printer", but then I look at the jobs I've done in the last year and I see reasons not to. Some years I do really tiny intricate products (like a lot of medical work), other times it's big and bulky (like bathtub size), but even the standard sized stuff varies becuase the customer needs it YESTERDAY or wants to get 5 of them, or wants to drill holes in it or wants it to be clear etc etc.
  
  So the upshot is that another year goes by and I decide not to buy a 3D printer. Instead I buy in as required, and this way I get to use state of the art kit. RP has become commodity in recent years. RP providers are after your business - there are some great deals to be had.
  
  Peronally I don't think 3D printing will hit the mass market until the machines hit the £5k mark. I liken it to printing technology. The first black and white lasers were about £5k (the first one I bought in 1990 was £2500!!). Colour lasers started to come in around the £5k mark about 1996-7. I bought a splendiferous IBM A4 colour laser with Fiery RIP and 500MB hard drive with the awesome capacity of 32MB RAM for £5000 at that time. Last year I bought a Xerox colour laser, duplex, postscript etc etc for £200. The consumables on the IBM were about £500 a set, about the same for the Xerox.
  
  So when ZCorp sell the £5k machine I'm first in the queue. Until then.......well that new U Drive Dimension printer does look nice but you can be sure the first job I get after buying it will be soemthing that is either tiny or BIG.
• Josh M
  You are right on queue man. That 2500 mark is gonna be huge. There's definitely a point where 3D printing seems more feasible and when that point is reached, the applications for them can multiply like a tidal wave of 3D print cartridges.
  
  Will it take mass retail to make it happen? I don't think so, but once people start to realize the applications... create the ways to use 3D printers, the market is going to open up, price will drop and that cycle will breed some new tech making even more possible.
  
  I guess that short paragraph crushes the difficulties in any B2B, B2C marketing and sales plan, but really I think accessibility and awareness are going to be big proponents of what makes 3D printing feasible, even us mindful engineers.
• Dave Moore
  Not only does the price have to come down on the machines the raw materials need to be cheaper. That's biggest problem with all RP systems I've looked at. At least with the ZCorp you can use cornstarch or powdered sugar as the base material. On FDM systems that isn't an option. With FDM, Stratasys or Objet, you have to buy the manufacturers raw materials for the machine to function properly.
  
  There are three major things that have to come into balance before 3D printing goes mainstream: cost of machine, cost of raw material, and build time. If you can balance those factors you'll have a winner.
  
  I'd really like to see SLS, selective laser sintering, take off. With those machine you have a metal part that is usable in a production environment, perfect for single use tooling or quick replacement parts.
• Kevin Quigley
  And when will Desktop factory EVER get into production!
• Josh M
  for real, I'm not sure if they keep trying to update the tech or make the price work for them.
• ben218
  Great article, we were a little surprised as well when heard last year that they were going bigger instead of more compact and cheaper. However as a reseller the existing customers and prospects in the pipeline are the ones driving the development and one question that recurs over and over is "Do you have anything with a bigger build envelope?
• Kevin Quigley
  I think you need to look at the existing technologies to see where the future lies. ZCorp using basically HP inkjet heads "should" be cheaper. FDM machines "should" be cheap. SLS with nylon powder, again should be cheaper. SLA using photopolymers is never going to be cheap though.
  
  The other issue is build size. Some processes are always going to be restricted. When you get over a certain size though CNC comes into its own. One thing I have been following with interest is the use of robots with FDM like technology extruding concrete for large scale house building or automised construction.
  
  http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/09/concretejet_p...
  
  Imagine this kind of thing combined with a 5 axes CNC head to apply the paste, then machine it away to create features. Size no object.
• chris
  Sorry to throw some cold water on this. I'm not sure this is all goodness. When I ran R&D at USSC we had the ability to make real parts ASAP. Model it up, make it and into the animal labs. We could concieve an idea, build it and test it for real in days. While this seem great it is really proves very little. It is easy to make 1 of anything. Don't get me wrong 3D printing is cool, but it does allow poor engineering and provide false hope. Lets not mention the green problem. Where does all this material go and what problems occur from it?
  
  Certainly 3D printing has it's place and will grow. But why not qualify your design with analysis tools and qualify it can be made with tolerance tools before just blindly printing away?
  
  OH ya at USSC I had 3 original SLA machines along side all the CNC stuff we had. That said we proved we could do more with good honest engineering.
• Josh M
  No need to be sorry at all Chris. Those are all excellent points, specifics we tend to forget about. I've thought about the material reuse and how 3D printing could possibly equalize engineering effort, which would (and has for some) certainly justify using DDM technology. The whole technology is definitely going to be different than it is today.
  
  Even for me, 3D printing seems far away from my daily workflow, concept sketches and digital models. but I think my hope is in how 3D print technology is going to inspire new applications for how we complete those sketches and digital models, much like one company is doing with discussions :)
  
  Thanks for the comment Chris!
• Tim Thieler
  Ticks = Blood sucking insects
  PolyGons = Many sided shape – STL’s are made of many 3-Gons
  Politicks = Many blood sucking insects?
• Gerd Schwaderer
  Hi all,
  
  actually we will see a 5000$ printer this year from a company called "Desktop Factory " that you can preorder. Check out http://www.desktopfactory.com .
  And there is already a 2.500$ printer called FABBER.
  And even scarier, check out the project "REPRAP" where you can create a second RP machine out of the parts you produce with your first one. And think of the films Terminator and I Robot. Check out http://reprap.org
  
  Gerd Schwaderer
  Geomagic GmbH, www.geomagic.com
  europe@geomagic.com
  Visit our optical measurement group at XING
• Fred van der Weij
  Since time is the biggest challange in product development it's clear the time advantage should be a leading factor when making a decision about 3D Printing. If I could cut a 2000 hour project with 200 hours that would save my company 10.000 EUR per year. Even if a 3D Printer can't be used for all prototyping parts I think there will be a decrease of development time of about 10%. If I could half the prototypng cost it could save us another 10-20.000 EUR per project. At the same time we would get an earlier ROI from the new product. A few weeks can off course have very large impact on pre-market costs. So, to my opinion, if a 20.000 EUR printer (Zcorp 310+) can save us more than 20.000 a year this seems like a good moment to start 3D printing to me. I think I'm at the point of getting one...

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