Hmmm... Domino's will be able to meet that '30 minutes' delivery time again without risking any accidents by its drivers. Hey... wait a minute... maybe that's how McDonald's, BK and Wendy's are currently making their burgers... that sort of taste like that waxy FUD process. :wideeyes:
Absolutely not. The machines shapeways uses have large print envelopes, and since they use the SLS process, they can probably fit 10 or more in a print at a time. Kent in KC nvrr49@yahoo.com Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
I'm a professional photographer. Fifteen years ago, an adventurous few were paying $20,000 for 2-megapixel cameras. The rest of us said digital cameras will never catch on. Ten years ago, almost ever photographer had bought a digital camera because prices had come way down. But we all said they will never drop low enough for everyone to afford one. Today it's getting to be very difficult to find a professional photographer with a studio. It wasn't even those cheap digital cameras that killed our profession; it's the cameras in the phones everyone carries with them everywhere (including the bathroom and to bed) that devalued portraits. Ten years ago if you had said that everyone in 2014, from elementary school students to senior citizens, would have a tiny handheld personal computer with them at all times you would have been laughed at. But here we are. 3D printers are being offered at preorder prices of $199 and up. Never say never.
Actually, you wouldn't have been laughed at for saying that ten years ago because we already had PDA's/Pocket PC's back then and the merging of them with a cell phone was seen as an inevitability.
Very faint signs. It's been six years now since I retired, and I haven't seen any real progress; they are just now starting to confirm what they suspected in 2008. LLNL and SNL are talking more about understanding nuclear physics in weapons than fusion energy. Nuclear weapons, of course, is where the money comes from. I suspect the new understanding is very classified. I do know that high res 3-D printing is superb for creating masters for other methods to mass produce more cheaply. I think that may continue for a long while. While I fully appreciate the exponential expansion of our information processing capabilities, I'm not sure that same rate of expansion applies to manufacturing capabilities.
Actually, I referring to the recent "energy positive" reactions at Lawrence Livermore that they have been able to pull off. Unfortunately. it wasn't ignition. However, it's not bad in terms of steps after about 40 years of fusion being 20 years in the future.
You've got that right. Only someone who doesn't mind being proved a fool says that. And I ran into a couple of them just last week.
I do agree that the kind of global acceptance of 3D printing is NOT like that of the smartphone or notebook computers... at least it is not likely to become a 'must-have' item in every home. BUT... as a development tool for businesses to make quick samples of products... to the cottage inventor with the next potential million dollar gizmo... the spread of 3D printing will become more pronounced. Individuals with 3D Cad/Cam knowledge would almost certainly buy one if the price is low enough and quality of output is good enough. In-so-far as our little niche of a niche hobby world... we have lots of items which could be produced to enhance our hobby without waiting for a mainstream model company to decide whether it's worth investing in tooling. There are scenery elements, locomotive and rolling stock details, all types of vehicles etc... which are not currently available for one reason or another. I'm particularly thinking about vehicles... which we all would like to have certain eras and 'brands' which we cannot have without first asking the auto company's permission to have them mass produced. If you have your own 3D printer... you could make all the Chryslers, Chevys, Pontiacs, Buicks models you want... without asking anyone's permission. Even if you don't have your own 3D printer or the skills to create the print file to create what you want... I'm sure that there will be a designer out there which has done something you may want... and can buy one from them. Most of the 3D N scale models on Shapeways are individuals that wanted a particular model for their own use... and was willing to sell extras to anyone interested. Some of those designers could be contracted to produce entire sets of vehicles print files for you... and the auto companies won't get a dime.
Boy, I sure hope you are wrong. It is a step in the wrong direction. We need more product not less. If N scale is to grow we need to produce product to meet the needs of affordability and availability. 3D printing doesn't do that but injection molding does. I don't see 3D printing doing it in the future either.
Well... Unfortunately licensing fees is causing a problem for a lot of products including regular locomotive road names. Remember all the 'name calling' we were doing when Union Pacific decided they wanted to get paid for using all of their acquired roads. At least we can avoid the excessive licensing fees with 3D printing. Maybe it will be a gateway to get the companies to bring down the licensing fees to get more products created.
I'd say for the foreseeable future 3D isn't going to replace standard manufacturing because of the price (cost of materials) and resolution. What it will definitely do is fill in the many gaps that the traditional manufacturers can't or won't. Just read a long thread the other day about the lack of variety of vehicles in N. That situation doesn't look like it's going to improve anytime soon, so 3D printing to the rescue. CAD programmers aren't always necessary either, because there's a companion piece of hardware being developed alongside the 3D printers: 3D scanners. Think about that for a minute. Stick one of the many HO vehicles in the scanner, scale it down, and out pops your N version from the printer a few minutes later. The problem that we might run into then is someone essentially stealing someone else's work and trying to sell it in quantity, but it most definitely will be done on our own layouts.
so everyone just prints at home ? then there's no need for ups drivers, warehouse companies, trucks, ships and similar. how would you then make sure you could finance 50% unemployment rate ? this just does not work. 3d printing is for rapid prototyping. not for mass production. maybe not even for smaller runs. printing might get quicker in the future but you're always limited to some physical and chemical processes. the higher the resolution the more layers you have to print. drying time of the stuff doesn't get faster. therefore : higher resolution = longer printing time. simple as that.
This LOOKS like the best hi-res printer for the money, but we will have to wait and see. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kudo3d/titan-1-fastest-tallest-print-high-res-sla-3d-prin Kent in KC nvrr49@yahoo.com Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
"I'd say for the foreseeable future 3D isn't going to replace standard manufacturing because of the price (cost of materials) and resolution." It is a common misconception that 3d printing resin's and filament are expensive. Filament is cheap, a roll lasts me months, and I print a lot. In the SLA process, the resin not used is immediately recycled. The cost is in the printer, printer time (my longest print took 17 hours), and the design time and/or skills. Fast mass production it ain't! Resolution, particularly on affordable home printers is a big issue. Kent in KC nvrr49@yahoo.com Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free
except it is not yet available. check out this one : http://formlabs.com/products/form-1-plus/ according to reviews and videos on youtube this is probably an affordable home printer.
Yes, I am aware of the latest "achievement." Sandia did the same a few years back with their Z Machine. I'm thinking 2006 or 2007. Never amounted to anything. I suspect Sandia was told to cool it about the Z Machine for IE fusion, lest they take away from the massively over-budget and behind-schedule National Ignition Facility at Livermore. Fusion is still 20 years in the future, or even more. The symmetry problems between the two approaches seem similar if not identical. I wrote about this stuff for years, and should probably likely maybe follow it more closely, but I have not seen one significant physics advance since I last wrote about it in ------ 2007? It's going to happen in Europe first, and they are not going to share.
Except in the situation where companies don't allow licensing at all... choking hazard, you know. (Or your basic greed, a la the decision of ExxonMobil to cut off Micro-Scales' Mobil decals last year.) In those cases, 3D printing will certainly allow products to be made "under the radar" by individual modelers or perhaps small groups who quietly share among themselves, but widespread distribution will almost certainly result in a Cease And Desist letter.
The quality of 3D printing for RTP is improving all the time, and the cost decreasing, just as it did with b&w laser printing, and then color. I remember my first Apple LaserWriter cost over $6000 in the 1990's. Now a better quality color laser printer is under £100 in the UK including 20% sales tax. However, I see that the 3D printer above prints at 30 microns. In N scale I print at 16 micron and the print lines are still very visible. I am expecting out first sub 10 micron printer soon - that will be very interesting to see how this works for RTP on N Scale models. Peter Peter Harris N Scale Kits www.nscalekits.com
