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Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

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211–220 of 281 posts

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see that unlike a 3d-printer, it's impossible to have a CNC in your desktop because of the waste. But I don't buy the "community" argument. Community has given us things like the arduino, a horrible technology obsolete from the very start. I do not think a technology is better just because many people use it.

What do you suggest in arduino's place?

Raspberry pi. Or better, the new beaglebone black. Anything with more than 10 kb of ram, really.

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#215

You know, I never even owned a 2D printer until last year. And my girlfriend bought that. Someone else always owned a printer and I just used it (Kinkos, library, work, school). I would hope it would be the same with a 3D printer. I don't want to have one. I don't want to buy ink or parts or worry about it or have it obsoleted in 2 years time. But if I want something 3D printed, I certainly hope that there will be st…

Exactly what I thought. Given that 3D printing is a whole family of technologies, purchasing a DIY model of one type of 3D printing technology would be a waste of money (for me). Thanks to online services I can get 3D prints in all sorts of high quality materials from SLS-printed plastic to ceramics, so much so that I have no idea why I would ever print anything out of a plastic spaghetti at home (I am referring to the FDM technology used by most DIY 3D printers). The only caveat with online 3D printing services is the delivery time, but in 99% of cases I'd rather wait a week (SLS plastic) or two (ceramic) for a piece to arrive in the mail than to spend a week or two tinkering with a DIY machine in order to get something remotely similar.

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#216

Here's a story. I always wanted to make a CNC machine. I got a bunch of parts off Craigslist from a guy, got some stuff off eBay, I was in college at the time so I never really had time to do anything with it (and money was tight), so I couldn't get it finished. But in college I saw some 3D printers, decided I wanted one. Moved back home with my parents, christmas / birthday was coming up. I was looking into some pri…

I'll add another data point to this. While working for Thalmic Labs (of the MYO fame) last semester, one of the best purchases decision was to buy a 3D printer. We were able to find a big, cupboard size professional 3D printer for a great price, and we bought it. It ended up being invaluable for prototyping the design of the product. The difference between the first prototype, and what the final product is going to l…

I wholeheartedly agree: For any organization developing hardware, a 3D printer is a productivity and creativity boost that is hard to replicate otherwise. We have a quarter million dollar 3D printer at my work (a research lab) and getting used to having access to such a tool is an amazing journey. First you just print the same designs that you would have machined otherwise. But soon you end up embracing the possibilities and design things that would be extremely difficult or even impossible to create otherwise. Of course you get spoilt quickly and start complaining about issues like the fact that using the rubber-like material requires a 90 minute material change procedure.

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#217

You know, I never even owned a 2D printer until last year. And my girlfriend bought that. Someone else always owned a printer and I just used it (Kinkos, library, work, school). I would hope it would be the same with a 3D printer. I don't want to have one. I don't want to buy ink or parts or worry about it or have it obsoleted in 2 years time. But if I want something 3D printed, I certainly hope that there will be st…

Over here in Austin at the Austin Hackerspace there are two 3D printers available for use, I've also seen another 3D printer that was printed from a 3D printer that one of the members had constructed, pretty neat eh?

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some personal favorites I ordered off of Shapeways: http://www.shapeways.com/model/24470/gyroid.html http://www.shapeways.com/model/335195/the-code-prize-fire-co... http://www.shapeways.com/model/683524/super-mario-mobius-str...

These are useless gimmicks, and in the worst case they can't be recycled. I didn't know of shapeways before, and I couldn't find a single useful thing on it. Are there more pragmatic 3D printing sites?

Since it enables you to make things you can't imagine, lots of people will make a large variety of things--a long tail of objects. For any subset of examples that people give you, it's easy to dismiss it as gimmicky. You'll need to find your own subset that means something to you.

Re: Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?

#220
post #215

You know, I never even owned a 2D printer until last year. And my girlfriend bought that. Someone else always owned a printer and I just used it (Kinkos, library, work, school). I would hope it would be the same with a 3D printer. I don't want to have one. I don't want to buy ink or parts or worry about it or have it obsoleted in 2 years time. But if I want something 3D printed, I certainly hope that there will be st…

Exactly what I thought. Given that 3D printing is a whole family of technologies, purchasing a DIY model of one type of 3D printing technology would be a waste of money (for me). Thanks to online services I can get 3D prints in all sorts of high quality materials from SLS-printed plastic to ceramics, so much so that I have no idea why I would ever print anything out of a plastic spaghetti at home (I am referring to t…

Depends on who you are, and what you're using it for. If you're printing stuff out that other people designed, more likely than not, you're willing to wait.

If you're designing the object, a shorter iteration process means faster learning and better creative flow. There's a significant difference between being able to think something up and try it out within an hour vs waiting a week for it. If you're a programmer, it's the difference between having a REPL and sending a deck of punch cards for overnight batch processing.

The current designs of single head FDM machines average about 60mm/s. The fastest XY heads can achieve 400mm/s, and the deltabots are around 300mm/s or so. There is an upper limit to how fast you can move a head around, but it doesn't feel like we've hit it yet.

In addition, I think as the FDM designs get explored and played out, we'll see explorations in other possibly faster methods. So as the home desktop printers get faster, I believe it'll find a niche that's different than what you'd do with online 3D printing services.

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