3d Printing and the Future of Piracy

Adebisi

Adebisi

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Anyone toying with 3d Printing?

What's good? What's affordable? What's shit?

Also some reads:
http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/08/3d...what-you-want/
http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/01/28/t...age-of-piracy/

If you ask me, it would be smart to learn ze autocad asap
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Springbok

Springbok

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Until I saw this post I had no idea this shit even existed. Mind = blown. This is some Jetsons type shit right here.

Why couldn't I, an enterprising young lad - purchase a "cheap" 3d printer and print out little Warhammer figurines and flip them on Ebay for cheaper than the sell in store? I read those articles, doesn't appear to be copyright infringement or anything. What am I missing? Is the plastic you feed the printer expensive or something? Really interesting stuff.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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We have been 3d printing shit in automotive for the better part of 20 yrs now. We use it mostly for prototype parts since the materials you print with are not robust, verry brittle.Its a very simple concept really, a laser melts powdered plastic into a solid milimeter by milimeter through the use of a cad model, or some scan. We use these for general fit and finish checks, installation, clearance checks etc. We actually build entire instrument panels out of those parts. Its expensive but tons cheaper than what we used to do, make actual limited run prototype tools to make the parts. Im sure this will advance like all tools do but its nothing really new and it has very little use outside of prototype for now. Il see if I can snap a picture of a IP were building right now for the new 2015 Maxima.
 
meStevo

meStevo

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I see a lot of this stuff at work. Some current and former employees got together with a few others and opened a maker space (https://synshop.org/SYN Shop) downtown. Best analogy I've ready about how to explain it to people is that it's like having a gym membership your brain. Has 3D printers, laser cutters and other equipment, etc.

We've had a couple of in house sessions (we call them Lunch N' Learns) demonstrating 3d printing stuff too.

Friend just laser etched the SYN Shop logo into his macbook shell:https://twitter.com/dharden/status/314952889741225985

Looking forward to this tech getting cheaper. It's had my mind racing a few times... from "reprinting" new and lost board game pieces to other random little needs around the house.
 
F

Flunklesnarkin_sl

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You can already download tech/printing specs for a lot of items on the pirate bay.

I'm just not convinced there are many plasticish things I want that would justify purchasing a printer.

edit..

always find cool stuff browsing the printer section lol.

Here's the printing spec for an AR-15 lower receiver. I wonder how that works in plastic though lol.

https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7483...__5rd_Magazine
 
mkopec

mkopec

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It does not. I can tell you first hand that the plastic that comes out is crap. Its very brittle and does not have any structural properties of other applicable plastics like poly pro or ABS.
 
BrutulTM

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There's a lot of types of plastic you can print with now. It's not like the stereolithography shit that they did 20 years ago. When I was in engineering we got prototypes that were called "stereolithography" and that plastic was very brittle but just before I left in '09 we got one of the next generation 3D printers and sometimes the parts were good enough that I wondered why we bothered machining the metal versions.

 
mkopec

mkopec

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You are right, I was assuming too much. SLA process can use a variety of materials...

rrr_img_19072.jpg


But reading into it a bit more, the actual 3D printing is an entirely different process. Instead of fusing liquid or plastic powder, they actually deposit material. There is also another process called SLS which can even produce metal parts. But im sure this process is probably the most expensive.

rrr_img_19072.jpg
 
Selix

Selix

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The interesting thing about this technology to me is that thought it cannot produce objects with the tolerances of metal it may still be able to produce effective things within the tolerances of plastic.
 
D

Dabamf_sl

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The only *current* use that seems interesting to me is just being able to download plans for some stupid plastic piece that broke off your desk/chair/cabinet/whatever and make it rather than having to replace the whole item. This looks pretty amazing for creating form, but a fundamental problem to me seems like structural integrity. Metal is very carefully treated to give it structural integrity, cycles of heating & cooling and whatever the fuck they do to make it stronger. How would this problem ever be overcome by 3d printers?
 
Big Phoenix

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Flunklesnarkin_sl said:
You can already download tech/printing specs for a lot of items on the pirate bay.

I'm just not convinced there are many plasticish things I want that would justify purchasing a printer.

edit..

always find cool stuff browsing the printer section lol.

Here's the printing spec for an AR-15 lower receiver. I wonder how that works in plastic though lol.

https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7483...__5rd_Magazine
Click to expand...
mother fucking legos, buckets and buckets and buckets of legos
 
mkopec

mkopec

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Selix_sl said:
The interesting thing about this technology to me is that thought it cannot produce objects with the tolerances of metal it may still be able to produce effective things within the tolerances of plastic.
Click to expand...
We produce production plastic parts within 1/100th of a millimeter. With .03mm designed gaps between parts.

Standard Stereolithography Tolerances: +/- 0.005" for the first inch, +/- 0.002" on every inch thereafter.
In the z height (vertical), standard tolerances of +/- 0.01" for the first inch, +/- 0.002" on every inch thereafter.
Stereolithography Layer Thickness: High Resolution: 0.002" - 0.004"; Standard Resolution: 0.005" - 0.006".

So its pretty fucking accurate.

The most accurate 5 axis mills go out another decimal point, so yeah, metal parts can be more accurate, but in an application like guns, or anything you will be using the printer for I dont think thse tolerances are needed. Its more for industrial uses like motors, engines, transmissions, etc...
 
xrg

xrg

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I saw that Sad Keanu on theShapewayssite. I use Blender and they just put in some new stuff to make 3D printing easier, so I've been debating making a figure or something just to see how it turns out. I'll probably go through something like Shapeways rather than buying my own 3D printer though.
 
Lambourne

Lambourne

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I'm wondering if this could be used to create molds for cast aluminum parts? Not necessarily at home but someone could start a business casting parts from user supplied/printed molds? I like to mess around with old cars and the idea of printing up some unobtainium part is quite appealing.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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I know that Jay Leno has his own CNC Milling machine which is sort of the metal version of a 3D printer that he uses to build obsolete car parts. Obviously it's a little more involved than a 3D printer, but I think they are getting to the point where you can just about plug a 3D model into them and put your chunk of aluminum into it and it will do most of the machining on it's own.



CNC Plasma cutters can also be used to make just about anything out of sheet metal.



This isn't stuff you're going to have in your house, but it's definitely getting to the point where if you can make a 3D model of something, you could email it to a shop and they could build it pretty inexpensively.
 
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