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3D Printing On Demand
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Oct 12, 2008 04:00 AM
from the safer-than-a-cnc-machine dept.
from the safer-than-a-cnc-machine dept.
Iddo Genuth writes "The Netherlands based company Shapeways is beta testing a new service allowing people to print three-dimensional models. Customers can upload designs or use a creation tool hosted at the Shapeways website, then order a printed model of their designs for less than $3 per square centimeter. The printed items are shipped to the customer in ten days or less, bringing 3D printing to consumers and not just companies large enough to afford their own printers."
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Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't that be cubic centimetres? Y'know... The third dimension.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:Eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, for goodness sake: try to at least catch up to the twentieth century, will you.
Yes, look, I know you're still agonising over whether to teach creationism in school science classes and burn witches over there, but, you must surely realise the consequences of your letting the world leave you behind, right?
Parent
Centimetre (Score:2)
Only the savages use "meter", I hear they genitally mutilate their male children too. It's barbaric.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They may be measuring the area printed in each layer. Find out the layer thickness and you can convert to volumes. I'd say it's still going to be expensive.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Shouldn't that be cubic centimetres? Y'know... The third dimension.
I thought it was obvious! They have invented an origami machine crossed with a standard printer.
Actually, that sounds quite interesting... Now off to RTFA.
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Informative)
As always, the summary website is wrong. If you go to shapeways.com they explain:
How is your pricing calculated?
Our pricing is based upon the actual amount of material used in your model. So the actual volume of your finished object not the volume of the bounding box. If you click on the order tab next to any model the system will calculate the price for you. All prices includes shipping and handling.
Parent
Re:Eh? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm planning on getting one in the new year.
Parent
Waaaaaah? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Waaaaaah? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:2)
Probably not. There are cheaper ways to fabricate a dildo.
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Not sure where the first reply went, but wouldn't the GW originals be cheaper. Now, that's a scary thought.
Assuming they meant 3 per cubic cenimeter (Score:2)
At least for the plastic ones, since I estimate (by tossing a few Orks into a half-full measuring cup) that it would be about 35 bucks to make 10 Boyz, which you can get in a 10-pack for 22.50 from GW. That's not to mention that I'm sure the resolution on their 3-dollar-a-ml models aren't quite as good as a plastic model from a mold.
Although it's certainly possible that I'd consider having some custom parts made this way, depending on what kind of plastic they're using.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.shapeways.com/about/material-options [shapeways.com]
Pricing and material info. The most expensive material is $2.89. But since you would have to paint it you could probably get away with the $2.77 one even the $1.89 which seems to still provide plenty of detail but is more springy. They provide sample pictures of the output of each material and asides from the first one the resolution seems to be quite good.
It's also worth pointing out that you could probably save some money by hollowing out the thicker part
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Dupe. (Score:4, Informative)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/01/1344232
A new copyright battle? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people are going to be using this to make 3D copies of cheap plastic items they own. Another poster mentioned Warhammer miniatures, and I could imagine lots of other small but expensive items being copied.
Once someone with money takes notice of this, I guarantee a legal battle tying to make it illegal.
Re:A new copyright battle? (Score:5, Insightful)
So... what? Now we are going to have 'Miniature cloning is stealing' blurbs on packaging for small-but-expensive items? 'When you cloning this miniature, you are cloning COMMUNISM'.
Interesting times ahead...
Parent
Re:A new copyright battle? (Score:4, Insightful)
while i don't think the effect of this particular service will be so drastic, i do think that if we event Star-Trek-style "replicators" the material economy would quickly become an anachronism. that is, if we manage to overcome the rearguard reaction to such an "anti-American" action.
i mean, just look at the situation with IP/copyright/patent law. it costs nothing to replicate digital music, movies, code, etc. but there is still a large legally enforced economy around the trade of such 'free' commodities. this is also the reason why the Google Book Search project was stonewalled by print publishers. it would have been an incredibly boon to humanity for such a digital literary repository to be published for free online, giving children/students unprecedented access to the largest corpus of human knowledge ever assembled. such a digital library would be invaluable in terms of the cultural & academic utility it would provide, possibly revolutionizing our society.
but if we couldn't eliminate the legal & economic barriers preventing such a useful and societally beneficial project form being realized, it's doubtful we'd be able to eliminate our capitalist economy by eliminating the cost of material production. unfortunately, we live in a society where corporate interest outweighs public interest. there's no way our corporate plutocrats will allow us to take away their sole source of power and privilege.
Parent
Re:A new copyright battle? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the whole basis of capitalism is trading something of lesser value for something of greater value. Physical scarcity is based on materials and labor, product scarcity is based on ideas, materials, and labor. This will severely diminish the labor from mass produced items, but there will still be things that require human labor (like repairing these printers, for instance). It will also make the artificial scarcity of reproduceable ideas moot, but the value of knowledge that can't be reproduced, such as a live concert by Coldplay or a conversation with Cory Doctorow, won't see any diminishment of scarcity. The material scarcity will remain, although the limiting factor will be increasingly raw materials rather than manufactured materials.
Capitalism will still function just fine. People will still value the products as much as they ever do, but the manufacturers will value them less - because they can make more of them with the same value of resources - so the price will go down.
Or were you referring to the bastard stepchild that Bush and Paulson and Bernanke and the MAFIAA refer to as "capitalism"?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
corporations will lie, cheat, and steal to increase their profits.
Yes, well, there's always people trying to find ways to oppose capitalism, and governments to help them do it.
Re: (Score:2)
How? Please try to be precise in your doom-mongering.
Re:A new copyright battle? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:A new copyright battle? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to see the following system put in place:
This wouldn't affect anyone's bottom line, and it wouldn't let you rip off their electronic components (which is where the real investment is at)... it would simply let you get replacement parts during those times when, traditionally, you couldn't.
Some companies might even choose to release their plans early, on their website or whatever, in order to get goodwill.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're kidding yourself if you think this wouldn't impact their bottom line.
For instance: mechanically/electronically, my IBM Thinkpad X30 is identical to how it was when I got it. It works great (though software has gotten more bloated in the meantime, and its argueable whether the Intel graphic chip in it is worth half a damn - point being, it works as designed.)
However, the plastic case has cracked, broken, and otherwise been deformed over the past 5 years I've had it. The hard drive cover - held in by a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The surface finish and material properties of 3D printer output is nothing like injection molded or machined plastics. If you want a weak, brittle copy in the wrong color with a rough surface, sure. But ain't nobody gonna be printing missing Lego parts with these.
Reprap (Score:5, Informative)
The article says that "the cheapest three dimensional printers cost $20,000", so I might as well mention the hacker's alternative:
http://blog.reprap.org/ [reprap.org]
http://www.reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome [reprap.org]
Re:Reprap (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Reprap (Score:4, Insightful)
> I don't mean to knock these projects, but the technology isn't really there yet.
I think you will find that is exactly why these projects exist. They are developing the technology.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Both are hugely expensive methods, and are probably one economical form prototypes. I estimated that the cost is a few dollars per cc. It is, however, likely cheaper than cr
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Irony at its finest.
Don't forget CandyFab (Score:2)
http://candyfab.org/
"The Revolution will be Caramelized."
I've seen this unit in action. 10 dpi resoution, but it smells like baking sugar cookies :)
Not just a dupe, not even news... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't even vaguely news. There's been 3d printing services like this for years. Just google [google.com] for them...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
but none of them offer such services at a price range accessible to the average person.
if you actually click on the links in the Google search results you'll see they're nothing like the service discussed in the article. they don't allow customers to upload designs and instantly order a print. they require you to contact the printer by e-mail or phone for a quote, and unless you're ordering bulk prints it's going to be financially impractical. that's because these existing services are aimed at businesses n
Re: (Score:2)
if you actually click on the links in the Google search results you'll see they're nothing like the service discussed in the article. they don't allow customers to upload designs and instantly order a print.
You sure about that? There's been companies doing 3d prints of Second Life builds for a couple of years now.
it's like saying consumer CD burners weren't news when they first came out because people could already call up a CD-pressing factory and have a single CD made for them for $100.
This isn't like "co
not only is this not news (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing new about this... (Score:5, Informative)
Cheap!? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.shapeways.com/model/6280/limbtaker_trophy.html [shapeways.com]
This bookend (21x22x23cm) is $7800. How is that anything close to cheap?
Wireframe objects without much mass are considerably cheaper, but any statues with heft are insanely expensive.
http://www.shapeways.com/model/6277/queen.html [shapeways.com]
A chess queen... $319. Seriously!
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Be creative, make it hollow so that its cheap to print and leave a hole so you can fill it with something cheap to give it weight later on.
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To be fair, I'm an idiot. I have actually paid a little bit more than that for a queen. It took years to order the entire chess set but it was worth it. If anyone's interested I can root around and *maybe* find the company that I ordered from though this was a number of years back and I've recently moved. And, again, to be fair - I'm an idiot. I've played maybe a dozen games on that board and it sits in storage for fear or having it broken.
In a similar vein (Score:2)
Cost (Score:2)
This place will be making a killing, if anyone uses it. The cost of consumables for 3D printing tends to not actually be all that bad. I routinely use a Stratasys machine that does FDM (fused deposition modeling - extruding hot plastic layer by layer), and the consumable cost is something like $5/in^3. Compare that to the quoted price of these guys: $3/cm^3. Do a units conversion (16.4 cm^3 = 1 in^3), and you'll find these guys are charging about 10x the consumable cost. This, of course, assumes that t
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I disagree with your numbers. For the 3D printers I have seen the cost of consumables plus maintenance contract plus cost of capital to have the machine on site (own or lease) brings the total costs to around $15/in^3. They have a margin, sure. The also have some operator time.
But yeah, $50/in^3 is no bargain.
Get a clue about how stuff is made (Score:4, Informative)
For those of you who have no idea how real, physical stuff is made, there's an entire industry of small "job shops" that will take your design and make a part for you. If you're anywhere near a industrial city, there's probably one in your neighborhood. Most will use machine tools, but ones with stereolithography machines [emachineshop.com] aren't that rare.
If you're in Silicon Valley and want to use a stereolithography machine, check out TechShop [techshop.ws], which has one of the better ones. It won't be busy when you visit.
Grand Opening Special... (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine the possibilities... (Score:2)
"Print your own Tux figure!" :D
Re: (Score:2)
So THAT'S why you're wearing a bra on your head?
Oh, and the mutant bikers want to have a "chat" with you.