31–40 of 58 posts
Jamison Go reported that his beetleweight fighting robot, Silent Spring, used a drum weapon made using a Desktop Metal system. The drum was printed using 4140 steel, then hardened the traditional way. It apparently yielded very good results, winning the beetleweight category at Bot Blast. You can search YouTube for videos of it in action.
For a nice CGI movie on their high volume model: https://www.desktopmetal.com/products/production/
Very impressive video. Questions that page completely doesn't answer, though: How much does the system cost? ($5k to "reserve", but what's the final cost? Their "downloads" page, of all places, has a price sheet for the "studio" system, but not the "production" system.) What does the software workflow involve, from CAD software to printing? Also disappointing that, despite having an innovative piece of hardware , the…
Follow the reserve page through two more clicks.
Studio system is $120,000
Production system is $360,000
The first is printer, debinder and furnace combined. So close to a total cost. The latter is printer only, so think of that figure as a secondary deposit.
Why didn't somebody already build something like this?
Jamison Go reported that his beetleweight fighting robot, Silent Spring, used a drum weapon made using a Desktop Metal system. The drum was printed using 4140 steel, then hardened the traditional way. It apparently yielded very good results, winning the beetleweight category at Bot Blast. You can search YouTube for videos of it in action.
I am really surprised to see Jamison being mentioned here as if he were a household name. I remember him from the Invention Studio at Georgia Tech.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see the advantages to this over lost-PLA casting. Am I missing something?
Expertise and materials. Casting aluminum is easy, but not very useful. Doing this yourself you can't guarantee grain structure/size, inclusions/porosity, or temper. Plus it's usually plenty easy to mill from billet since aluminum is so soft. Gold/silver is also relatively easy. You need better equipment since the temperatures are 2x higher. Strength isn't important, so casting stuff in gold/silver is quite common. O…
Waiting for the day that printer will be able to print copies of itself.
I don't understand why this hope is still prevalent. 3D printers are just another tool in the manufacturing toolbox. The sets of materials and structures printers are made from barely overlap with the sets of materials and structures that the same printers make. If 3D printers could make themselves, I think they would look a lot more like biological organisms and a lot less like laser copiers. That said, the Desktop…
Much like people think that the only thing standing between them and designing cool new useful software is all that pesky syntax, and that if they had some magic application to turn pictures into software, the rest would be easy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any engineering shop that's prototyping and possible creating production products. I got to see the prints first hand, pretty solid stuff. Sadly they hadn't printed a T-800 terminator yet, but give it time. Skynet is alive!
Would their be a market to be a middle man that owns the printer and does the work to coordinate low volume runs from shops that need some prints, but not enough for full volume or enough to own/maintain the printer?
Waiting for the day that printer will be able to print copies of itself.
Maybe just a robot that keeps ordering copies of itself from Amazon? That seems more attainable.
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/artwork-selling-itself-on-eba...
For a nice CGI movie on their high volume model: https://www.desktopmetal.com/products/production/
Very impressive video. Questions that page completely doesn't answer, though: How much does the system cost? ($5k to "reserve", but what's the final cost? Their "downloads" page, of all places, has a price sheet for the "studio" system, but not the "production" system.) What does the software workflow involve, from CAD software to printing? Also disappointing that, despite having an innovative piece of hardware , the…
My client created an innovative piece of hardware without investing in proprietary software. In a couple of months, he found cheaper clones offered on aliexpress and taobao. While the design was good, the product failed commercially. Then the company found me, I’ve created heavily proprietary software for the next version of their hardware. The product sells OK so far.
In addition, creating software from scratch specifically for the given hardware delivers better overall value for the end users.