A 3D Printer On Every Desktop?

holy_calamity writes "Two Cornell researchers have designed an open source 3D printer that costs just $2,400. The self-assembly kit is part of what they call the Fab@Home project — they hope it will spark development of rapid prototyping for the consumer market in the same way the Altair 8800 did for personal computing in seventies." Here is a video showing a completed machine constructing a silicone bulb (16-MB WMV).
Update: 01/10 04:02 GMT by KD : The developers of this kit are at Cornell, not Carnegie Mellon University as the original post erroneously stated.

hmmmmm

[User 956 (568564)]

A 3D Printer On Every Desktop?

I just circled my desk, and it looks like the HP Laserjet I already have exists in 3 Dimensions. Surely this means HP has beaten this other company to market.

Re:hmmmmm

[Surt (22457)]

I'm afraid that's just a stereoscopic projection trick, not real 3d. If you reach out and put your hand on 'top' of your printer, you'll find it's really quite flat.

Re:hmmmmm

[PRC Banker (970188)]

Three is a number under ten. Therefore it should be spelled out using letters.

You do realise that 10 is not under 10? Therefore why do you spell it with letters?

Heard of Youtube?

[AaronBaker2000 (480581)]

I'd rather not download a video my computer can't even play. Can some nice person post it on youtube?

Re:

[soapee01 (698313)]

ok. fab@home video [youtube.com]

Re:Heard of Youtube?

[KermodeBear (738243)]

Fab@Home Video [youtube.com] on YouTube, as requested.

Re:

[Paralizer (792155)]

Unless I misread the URL you posted, those are precompiled 32bit codecs from Microsoft. To use it with a 64bit player would not be possible.

IP Issues to Hit Action Figure Market

[istartedi (132515)]

IP Issues to Hit Action Figure Market. Seems inevitable. Dad, can you print me a few dozen more Ninja Turtles? If it comes with a 3d scanner, kiss Barbie Good-Bye. Mattel becomes the next Sony.

Suddenly...

[Dr. Cody (554864)]

...the "40K" in Warhammer 40K isn't US dollars.

Re:IP Issues to Hit Action Figure Market

[Speare (84249)]

Mattel is ALREADY the next Sony; more like Sony is just copying Mattel Barbie legal tactics from the 60s.

Re:IP Issues to Hit Action Figure Market

[timeOday (582209)]

Dolls? Humbug. I'll be excited when the 3d printer can print up a working copy of itself. Then we can think about robot overlords.

I wonder

[User 956 (568564)]

Here is a video showing a completed machine constructing a silicone bulb (16M-MB WMV).

Given the ungodly expense of regular inkjet cartridges [gizmodo.com], I can only wonder how much the refills for this thing will run.

Re:I wonder

[FLEB (312391)]

RTFA? It can run on chocolate or Play-Doh.

No problem

[jspoon (585173)]

Whenever you get close to running out of material, print another cartridge.

Re:

[numbski (515011)]

"Will, don't you see!?!? Chicken or the egg! CHICKEN OR THE EGG!!!"

while ($i==0){
    $i=0;
}

The uses are endless

[traindirector (1001483)]

Building and using one of these seems like a fun and even practical hobby. Ever get frustrated at the plastic parts that break and render something useless? Now you can make replacements. Ever wonder what to get for the person who has everything? Well, I'm pretty sure you could make them a lot of neat personalized things with one of these that they'll be stumped as to where you could have found them.

This project obviously has a long way to go, but I think the comparison to early personal computers could be fair, given the huge realm of possibilities creating objects in 3D space opens.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

C'mon! Silicon, 3D... We all know what we are going to print first!

Re:

[uNople (734531)]

Breast implants?

Re:

[PitaBred (632671)]

I'd make a present for my girlfriend, but I can't find a cheap 3D scanner...

Re:The uses are endless

[tverbeek (457094)]

Imagine typing in page after page of DATA statements for it, copied out of the back of Fabricate! magazine. Ah, those were the days....

Linking a 16 MB vid from the /. frontpage...

[PsyQo (1020321)]

I bet they are printing a new webserver right now.

So What's Next Then?

[segedunum (883035)]

Digital Rights Management for physical objects?

Re:So What's Next Then?

[crabpeople (720852)]

Yeah well thats alot of what critics of DRM have been saying. If you make all these laws for music and drugs, when it comes time for nano forges to roll in, they will be used to enforce an artificial scarcity on everything. What could completely eliminate materialism would end up being for profit, like every other god damned invention.

Re:

[flonker (526111)]

Patents are the copyright for physical objects. DRM is a technologically enforced copy limitation. Patents and copyright are legally enforced. A technological DRM for physical objects might be some kind of shape that 3D printers are legally required to recognize and not print without a cryptographically signed token of some sort.

So useful I could cry

[Kell Bengal (711123)]

I'm a robotics post grad student, and I often work on robotics hobby projects in my spare time (little of it that there is!). Something affordable like this would rock my world in so many ways. The biggest question I have is how accurate is a self-assembly kit in practice? If you're trying to build prototype mechanisms or moulds for metal with the parts, how tight are your tolerances going to be? That said, for me, if it came down to a new car or a desktop rapid prototyping machine, the rapid prototyping machine will win every single time.

Where's the porn angle?

[MyOtherUIDis3digits (926429)]

If the manufacturer's want one of these on every desktop, figure out how it will provide titillation (porn) to Joe User (and me too).

Worked for the internet, dvd players, VCR's, cable and satellite TV, etc, etc.

1. (immaterial)
2. add porn
3. profit!

Re:Where's the porn angle?

[JamesTRexx (675890)]

Download and compile your own Realdoll?

Re:

[Sponge Bath (413667)]

I think you are better off investing the $2500 in hookers.
With that kind of money, even I could get laid.

What's the precision on these things?

[mark-t (151149)]

If it's possible to use these to "print" inexpensive lego pieces (within 0.005mm precision, iirc) then I am *SO* sold....

Re:

[retro128 (318602)]

Amen. It would be simply awesome if there was a cheap way to print custom parts out of ABS plastic. It may not look the greatest because you'd be able to see the "steps" from the printing process. Because of this I doubt it would be practical to print Lego bricks or such things as that because the layers created during printing are where the part is weakest. When exposed to stress the part would be more likely to break on the layer lines. But even so, for hobbyists it would beat the hell out of having

We need something like this for transistors

[AuMatar (183847)]

When I read fab I was so hoping it could print out a working circuitboard from a custom design. Don't get me wrong, this is cool too. But imagine if we could get a circuit one. Computing has already accepted open source for software, there's some effort of open source hardware designs going on. With the equivalent of this for circuits, we'd put the ability to make new electronics designs in the hands of thousands of hobbyists. Just look at all the cool stuff that hobbyists have made with software, imagine what we be invented if they had hardware as well!

Now that I think of it- the combination of that and this would be truely awesome. A talented hacker, or a small team, could design software, hardware, and test out of their own homes without expensive produciton costs. It'd be a huge breakthrough.

Buck would be proud

[djupedal (584558)]

Buckminster Fuller [ourpla.net] wanted to give every other person a lathe, and have the first thing each of them made to be another lathe - so, buy a 3D printer and make another one for a friend :)

Re:

[kfg (145172)]

. . .buy a 3D printer and make another one for a friend . . .

Ok, but you'll need a . . .lathe.

KFG

Not actually at Carnegie Mellon

[linefeed0 (550967)]

The fabathome wiki indicates Hod Lipson is at Cornell, and CMU's directory has no record of either researcher (which would usually be present for a year or so after leaving the university).

And I was beginning to think this would be something that would make me *proud* of my alma mater for once...

Memo to freshman Democrats in Congress: Please please tie research funding to doing useful research, and running an institution well for its students (that means a clean, consistent financial aid system and reasonable tuition), not defense and homeland stupidity pork. Your constituents will thank you.

Amazing

[saladpuncher (633633)]

Seems a little expensive. Could someone build one of these printers and then print the printer itself and mail it to me? I promise to duplicate it as well and give some to my friends. Seriously though, if I owned a manufacturing company of any any kind I would be scared of this thing. In 30 years you might witness the end of large scale production of small consumer goods. Throwing a party? Print up the plates and forks and chairs and tables you need. Need a gift? Print up some Barbie dolls. In 50 years the only thing that might actually be sold are the plans needed to fabricate something and the "ink" for this thing. If I was very cynical I would say this could end capitalism itself :)

Re:Amazing

[MyHair (589485)]

If I was very cynical I would say this could end capitalism itself :)

Capitalism will end when I can print a blow job.

Re:Amazing

[Frogbert (589961)]

In 30 years you might witness the end of large scale production of small consumer goods.

And witness the rise of overpriced 3D printer cartridge manufacturing!

Tea, earl grey, hot!

[McGoon76 (707601)]

Nuf said...

I may be missing something...

[gigne (990887)]

Surely this is just plans for a CNC goo dispensing machine? I modded a £120 manual milling machine to laser acetate, surely it's only 1 more step to attach a syringe and screw thread dispenser. Total cost £200. Seems a hell of a lot cheaper than $2500 (estimated, it's plans remember)

You know, for kids

[BoberFett (127537)]

Anyone who has kids knows how quickly modern toys break. Parents are also well aware of the fact that toys rarely last on the shelf for more than a season and trying to get a manufacturer to send spare parts is damn near impossible. The possibility of open source toys, or at the very least replacement parts for closed source toys, is enticing. If these things can come down to a reasonable price (they also need some advances as far as color output) I think they could become quite popular.

PS A cookie to the first person who can tell me what movie the subject of my post is from. :)

The article is incorrect

[NitsujTPU (19263)]

Hod Lipson is a professor at Cornell University, not Carnegie Mellon, and the Cornell shield is completely visible in the photo, as are the words "Cornell University."

Looks more like science fair project

[DumbSwede (521261)]

Call me a cynic, but this thing hardly looks ready for primetime. In fact it looks to work far worse than 3D prototype printers I saw demonstrated 5-7 years ago did.

"Two Carnegie Mellon researchers..." translation: "Two graduate students' thesis project"

For those that didn't watch the video, it looks like a time-lapse speed up of a caterpillar building a cocoon. Seriously it has an almost creepy organic look. There is no time mark on the video so there is no indication of how long this thing took to build. The shape is brain-dead simple. Can it spin anything more complex than a circle as it builds? What good is a printer that can only make balls, cylinders, and bulbs? Presumably this item is flexible being made of silicone rubber, but that seems to be more a side effect of it being built on the cheap with off the shelf materials. It even had to be "refilled" half way through building this rather small bulb, which is mostly air to start with!

For all the people than mentioned using this device to repair things around the house, I hope the only thing that ever breaks around your house is your turkey baster (assuming this thing can print a bulb that large).

As has been mentioned by other posters, these machines will only become truly useful when they can extrude a variety of materials with a variety of material properties. I would imagine you could get a range of properties in stiffness and heat resistance by varying proportions of two or three basic plastic polymers with perhaps a few additional curing additives. Rather than demand a 100% build from scratch perhaps a few standard sized metal reinforcement parts could be thrown into the mix, though this would require a pause while the machine requested user assistance to add screws, rings, dowels, or thread a wire or two.

Really useful auto manufacturing will require serious breakthroughs in AI and robotics to assembling a variety of fabricated parts into something useful, only then will manufacturing prices plummet. Keep in mind we have had auto-milling machines for decades and they haven't obsoleted most manufacturing processes. They can also mill into custom shapes a much wider range of materials.

Modela MDX-15 3d mill/scanner $2995

[chocolatetrumpet (73058)]

The Modela MDX-15 [gravers.com] is only $2995.

It's not only a mill, but a 3d scanner too.

For all of you drooling over the $2400 price tag, is $600 more really so much to ask?

Re:Can't say much more than

[numbski (515011)]

Save your money. The API is pretty hosed. I sent a simple command, almost verbatim from the docs, only substituted my own object, and well, it didn't work! Here's the code snippet:

fab("Earl Grey, Hot");

Re:Can't say much more than

[Jon Kay (582672)]

> fab("Earl Grey, Hot");

Lemme guess - you got a liquid that was almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea.

Re:

[Eccles (932)]

I'm not that much of a Trek geek, I don't think, but isn't it "Tea, Earl Gray, hot"? I doubt you wanted to replicate the actual Earl...

Re:Can't say much more than

[by Anonymous Coward]

If they put him in a miniskirt, he might then be hot...

Re:Can't say much more than

[AnyoneEB (574727)]

Idiot, of course it didn't work!

The command is "Tea, Earl Grey, hot". Duh.

Re:Can't say much more than

[WhyCause (179039)]

Nah, that will never happen.

Surgeons buy pieces from Dow because Dow has spent a lot of time and money certifying the safety of their process and parts with (among others) the FDA. Surgeons buy the parts, and don't have to be too concerned that a manufacturing defect or bad batch of materials slipped past QA. If (God forbid) QA flubs one, the surgeon can (legitimately) blame Dow. If you're doing the QA in your office, however...

While part of the (exorbitant amounts of) money spent on any sort of health care ensures that everyone involved makes a tidy profit, you are paying much more for the guarantee of safety than anything else.

In essence, silicone is cheap; the insurance and hassle involved with making a safe part is very much the antithesis of cheap.

Re:

[EaglemanBSA (950534)]

By 'just started' I mean 'earlier this afternoon', so there's really nothing there, but the current address is openmechanics.netcipia.net -- if you know of a free wiki host that doesn't require outside users to register, let me know, I'd like this to be pretty open. The registration is free, btw. At any rate, there's really nothing there but a pseudo-mission statement, but I'm eager to build the thing, so stop on by, drop an email addy and we'll get started!