Businessman : "I'm sitting on a gold mine: My company is selling 3-D printers, which are all the rage now.
With 3-D printers, anyone can create functional objects ranging from household items to biomedical and precision engineering products."
Man A : "Hmm, precision engineering...what if someone uses your 3-D printer to churn out even more 3-D printers for sales, hence putting you out of business?"
Man C : "My printer can produce three-dimensional print-outs."
Man D : "Wow, you got one of those wonderful 3-D printers?"
Man C : "No, it is a normal one...with a paper jam problem!"
Papers printed out in \/\/\ shapes from the jammed printer.
Name:
Anonymous2013-04-02 20:46
there is a dude making lower recievers for ar15's with a 3d printer, other parts you can get online no age or background check. last I heard he was able to get `600 rounds off before it broke
Name:
Anonymous2013-04-04 1:00
if i had a 3d prionter id print out a bunch of dildos and try to stick them in all the holes i have
Name:
Anonymous2013-04-04 18:48
>>3
just to clarify i mean my bodily orifices, not like holes in my roof or anything
i'm interested in starting a "grey zone" business using a 3d printer. i just thought of that today, haven't read much about that subject but i wonder how one would ship these items , ideally anonymously or at least discretely. the banking could be tricky too. basically i'm thinking about printing copyrighted stuff that is mad expensive and making it available to the public. another thing, how one would go about getting people involve to produce CAD files to be uploaded on piratebay. also, how big an object can be made with printers available today?
Name:
Anonymous2013-04-12 1:17
dont want to defraud the gov, don't mind paying my taxes. matter of fact i just thought of a way about that aspect so forget about it, but please address the rest of what i asked.
Name:
Anonymous2013-04-17 16:39
It would be so much easier if they sold a 3d glue printer or a plastic shopping bag recycler to 3d print-out. The material would be easier to find and I'd be more likely to buy it.
It makes no sense to waste electricity to melt down a hard to find material. I'm still waiting on someone to design a heat printer that prints on papers that are larger than those shopping receipts. That would save me so many headaches with ink and paper alignment.
>>10
this tech sucks, thats why they only use it for temporary shit such as receipts. Just rubbing your thumb on the paper erases everything that was printed.
Name:
Anonymous2013-08-13 23:27
>>16
Or better yet, if you scratch your fingernail into it, it creates a dark line. The ink is inside the paper.
Name:
Anonymous2013-08-31 1:44
The big idea in history : Creating layers with lasers
THERE are currently more than 40 ways to use 3D printer to make things but they all started with the same idea - using lasers to turn a molten, liquid or powdery substance into a solid object.
In a 2011 report, American 3-D printing advocate Terry Wohlers traced the initial innovation to the late 1960s, when researchers at the Battelle Memorial Institute in the United States aimed two lasers at a special resin and created a mass out of it.
Then in 1970s, Mr Wohlers writes, US company Dynell Electronics perfected a way to control a laser cutter via a computer so that a rough chunk of material could be sliced as wafer-thin as possible, like salami.
The computer would then stack each filmy slice atop the other, to cool and harden into a specifically shaped item. Researchers continued improving on these methods until 1980s, when Japanese engineer Hideo Kodama found a way to use a single laser beam to carve out and harden slices of resin.
But it was the US that soon surged ahead in innovating 3-D printers. In 1984, Mr Charles Hull, co-founder of a California start-up called 3-D Systems, registered a patent for using a computer-controlled laser beam to harden slices of plastic into an object.
Today, the US remains the clear leader in this field, especially 3-D printing (3DP) with plastics. Germany is best at 3DP with powdered metals.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, are now trying to supersede 3DP with what they call "smart sand", or special grains that can automatically sense shapes.
If you drop, say a cup into this sand, the grains will automatically bond themselves such that they make a usable replica of that very cup.
Name:
Anonymous2013-08-31 2:18
The big idea in action : Customising precisely and speedily
When people first saw the technology known as additive manufacturing, they wondered: "What would be the point of such sci-fi technology when translated into reality?"
Additive manufacturing, also known as 3-D printing, was then used to generate first-cut designs such as mini architectural models of buildings.
Now however user are considered that concept of building an object layer by layer with a molten substance a "strong" idea with potentially lots of applications.
As a country, US cannot risk not looking into the possibilities of this technology.
It is part of the future of manufacturing but not the future of manufacturing because it might be superseded in time to come.
The rub is finding a way to "jump across the chasm between prototyping and full manufacturing".
Also, for now, few small and medium-sized enterprises can make the jump because it costs too much to research such technology.
US is monitoring developments with this technology closely with a view to applying it generally to various assembly lines. It is estimates, however, that it will take at least 10 years to do so. At the moment, additive manufacturing cannot replace mass manufacturing because:
• Its printers are too expensive and still too small to build entire projects such as cars or airplanes;
• Each 3-D printer can print with only one substance at a time, so it cannot make, say, an entire car at once because a vehicle is made up of steel, plastic, cloth, leather and other material;
• The materials used as "ink" in the printers are not of solid enough quality for large-scale construction, being mostly in powered form; and
• It is still much slower to print an object layer by layer than it is to make it conventionally in factories.
3-D printing is a very good research tool because you can print many iterations of a design fairly inexpensively to test which design holds up best.
The strength of this technology is its ability to customise an object with precision. So it is particularly effective in making body parts such as dental, hip and knee implants and bones. It helps that the powder used in 3-D printers makes functionally porous bones.
So 3-D printing is uesful if a multinational company wants its branches all over the world to test or sell a product. Each branch need only be given the computer file of the design to print out the product in question instantly in its office.
So. I thought of a thing. This is my thing. There have been and are worries among people that too much time spent online will dissipate human interaction. But, why exactly is this a bad thing?
Don't try to waste space here by posting off-topic and trolling here, dumbass. Tell your low-life online shit view to a dog or a tree!
Name:
Anonymous2013-12-16 11:13
Clothes get printed in 3-D
3-D printing makes it possible for design and fitting to be done virtually without sewing machine
Lindsay Ellingson wearing a snowflake corset, bustle and arm-pieces fabricated on a 3-D printer at a Victoria's Secret fashion show.
Mr Duann Scott holding sunglasses he designed and fabricated on a 3-D printer.
New York - Will the 3-D printer replace the sewing machine as the favoured tool of fashion designers?
In recent months, 3-D-printed clothes and accessories have shown up on Project Runway (a contestant printed belts), the actual runaway (Dutch designer Iris van Herpen's 3-D-printed collection called Voltage) and on the Neiman Marcus website (which sells 3-D pieces such as Bathsheba Grossman's sculptural stainless-steel orbs).
A few day ago, 3-D printed fashion had perhaps its biggest moment when CBS broadcast the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Model Cara Delevingne walked the runway in computer-generated angel wings, while Lindsay Ellingson was outfitted in a corset, bustle and arm pieces intricately designed to look like snowflakes.
Architect Bradley Rothenberg, who operates a Manhattan-based design studio called studioBRAD, collaborated with Victoria's Secret to create the garments.
He is excited about the technology's potential to change how clothes are made and fit.
"Clothing can be custom and even specific to your body," he said, citing as an example the way a garment could be made to stretch more in the elbow than in the forearm.
"The other advantage for 3-D printing with textiles is the level of complexity," he added. "When you think of constructing with a sewing machine, you're always thinking in terms of the thread. With 3-D printing, you're not limited to that. Imagine having a knit sweater mixed with a T-shirt mixed with jacket."
At the moment, the material used in 3-D printing is not super-thin, so the process does not yet lend itself to printing delicate and soft clothing. The 3-D printed garments tend to be made of nylon and are still more art project than everyday attire.
But the improving functionality of 3-D fashion was illustrated earlier this year when Francis Bitonti designed, in collaboration with costume designer Michael Schmidt, a laser-sintered gown for burlesque performer Dita Von Teese. Constructed like chain mail, the gown had 3,000 articulated connections.
Bitonti, a New York-based fashion designer has been working with 3-D printing since 2007.
"The materials are getting better every day," he said. The design and fitting process for Von Teese's dress were done virtually, he said. "When you see it in reality, and it's exactly as pictured, it's surreal."
The Dita dress was printed by Shape-ways, a company that acts as a market-place and service for 3-D-printed goods, as well as a booster for designers.
Mr Duann Scott, whose title at Shareways is designer evangelist, said that the low financial risk (objects are printed on demand) is ideal for fashion designers looking to stretch boundaries.
"Short seasons, doing new things all the time: That's what works for the fashion industry," he said.
The company's all-white futuristic-looking factory in Queens houses several industrial printers; designers can work with a range of materials, from nylon to bronze to stainless steel.
Ms Kimberly Ovitz turned to Shapeways when she wanted to design rings and other jewellery to complement her women's clothing line.
"The technology allowed me to revolutionise the timeline," she said. "People could look at my jewellery on the runway and get it in two weeks. And they could customise the material and colour."
That embrace of the new is drawing fashion to 3-D printing. "We don't need to reinvent jeans," Mr Scott said: "Cotton is good. It's about making something unique that would otherwise be impossible."
New York Times
Name:
Anonymous2014-01-13 12:42
Warplane with 3-D printed parts in test flight
LONDON - A Tornado fighter jet fitted with metal components created on a 3-D printer undertook a successful test flight in Britain last month, defence company BAE Systems said.
The plane was equipped with a 3-D printed protective cover for the cockpit radio, a protective guard in the landing gear and support struts on the air intake door, the British firm said.
The announcement follows US space agency Nasa's successful test of a 3-D printed rocket engine component in August last year, as aerospace firms seek cheaper and quicker ways to manufacture engineering parts.
"You are suddenly not fixed in terms of where you have to manufacture these things," said Mr Mike Murray, head of Airframe Integration at BAE Systems, announcing the successful test flight at the company's airfield in Warton, England, yesterday.
"You can manufacture the products and whatever base you want, providing you can get a machine there, which means you can also start to support other platforms such as ships and aircraft carriers."
BAE said some of the parts - produced at a Royal Air Force base in eastern England - cost less than £100 to manufacture, and had the potential to save hundreds of thousands of pounds every year, without giving details.
HOLD IT! This composite photograph shows the process of acquiring data by scanning Mrs Rie Shimizu's entire body with a 3-D scanner. Several gigabytes of data are recorded during each scan.
FOR about five minutes, the woman stands as still as possible while a man passes a hand-held device around her whole body. When the ordeal is over, she sighs with relief.
This happens at a studio that makes 3-D figures in the Ichigaya district of Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, in Japan. Both the woman and the man, who wields a 3-D scanner, were deadly serious because precise data cannot be recorded if the model moves during the process.
Sony Music Communications started selling the 3-D Print Figure product last year, in which a figure is sculpted using full-colour 3-D scanners.
To create the figure, the scanner first obtains data through the scanning of a person from head to toe.
Then a computer models the data and outputs images through a 3-D printer using colour ink, special bonding materials and white plastic powder.
The price for a figure ranges from 49,000 yen to 120,000 yen, depending on the size.
According to Mr Yosuke Takuma, who planned this business for Sony Music Communications, the 3-D figures are popular among people who want to mark special occasions, such as weddings and matriculation ceremonies.
It takes about two months to produce a 3-D Print Figure.
Mr Makoto Shimizu and his wife-to-be Rie, who plan to hold their wedding ceremony in Osaka this month, visited the studio.
"We want to welcome our guests at the wedding in an unusual way and thought it would be a good idea for figures just like us to hold boards welcoming them," Mr Shimizu said.
Mr Koji Iwabuchi and his wife Yumi visited the studio to order figures to commemorate their 20th wedding anniversary.
"It's like photography at the end of the Edo period (1603-1867) as we cannot move at all," Mr Iwabuchi said.
"It's interesting to feel like Sakamoto Ryoma. In the future, it might become an ordinary thing, but it's fun that few people have experienced this," he said.
Ryoma (1836-1867), an Edo-period figure who envisioned a Japan free from feudal rule, is also known as the subject of some famous photos from that time.
Mr Iwabuchi said: "However, as everything is reproduced very accurately, including body shape, hair texture and wrinkles in the clothing, it would be great if they retouched the figure slightly."
Said Mr Takuma: "No matter how advanced the technology is, the quality of the figures ultimately depends on the analog skills of the people involved, such as how quickly and well technicians scan subjects, how much experience they have in adjusting scanned data, how much time they spend on the work or how good their finishing touches are."