What would make you buy a 3D printer?
There's a lot of new kickstarters and options for low(er)cost 3D printers everyday and it seems like services like Shapeways or Sculpteo are bringing their prices down as competition ramps up. It seems a lot of CAD modelers are looking into it but what about Maya, 3DS max and ZBrush modelers.
As modelers and sculptors, what is your interest level in 3D printing? or what do you think needs to be done before you drop some coin on one?
As modelers and sculptors, what is your interest level in 3D printing? or what do you think needs to be done before you drop some coin on one?
Replies
No idea what I would print yet, would probably just break open my archive of models and print off some of my weirdest ones
Edit:That said 3D printing is largely a novelty for me.
I'm torn about buying a printer but it's probably equal or less than what the average person spends on phones & phone plans in a year. I rock a flip phone with no data that I replace only when it's so broken I can't use it anymore.
For example, I lost a few of those little feet from a few kitchen chairs. If I could just mockup/print some replacements, that'd be pretty cool.
Or when the dishwasher loses a clip that holds one of the wheels or something. Would be super fun/easy to print.
Oh another idea. Maybe GPU is sagging in computer. 3d print a custom support that mounts to one of the rear slots.
Going even further.. Maybe a switch in the car broke and its insanely extensive for a simple plastic part. 3d print!!
Jeez edit again. Want some nice polarized lenses but don't want to pay for a frame. Design and print some custom frames!
Costs would have to decrease and quality would have to increase though. Maybe in a few years.
One of my project plans is to print out goggles to house my brain machine (custom fit to the 3D scan of my head I did with the Kinect)
Oh I had no idea, I haven't done much research into 3d printing. So hopefully costs come down to like $100-$200 for a small printer. That'd be sweeeet.
That might be a while, I've seen people say you can build your own almost from scratch for around $700-$900.
I've thought about getting a Mendel Max, it seems like a good balance of build it yourself so you know how to fix/upgrade it and decent prints.
Also Frys now sells the plastic for the printer. I actually have a business venture of my own in mind that would make a 3d printer a very useful asset so I intend to hopefully get and mod one myself sometime this summer. And I imagine printing out my own glasses frames could save me quite a bit of money in the long run too.
Good points. I guess I'd personally see it as a purchase on par with a great gaming rig. It's an extraneous purchase that will show it's worth with how great the content created for it is. If someone had a design or idea on printing products out to start a small business venture, that'd be pretty cool.
I guess I'd consider myself a collector so I'd also be interested if the lead character artist at Naughty Dog or someone of that caliber that's well known, decided to sell the printable file of one of their characters. Or Naughty dog themselves sold a Joel and Ellie printable maquette/statue I might buy into that. Kind of like DLC but you get something physical with your purchase.
I'm most interested in using a 3D printer for creating custom parts for classic games. I would love to design some custom shells for some of my older video game consoles and handhelds. And I specifically want to create custom-sculpted exteriors for some classic game cartridges. It's the kind of thing I could create a basic 3D template for, and then sculpt details on to it in lieu of stickers.
There's also the possibilities for custom board game design. Being able to print out my own custom miniatures would be fantastic for designing my own table-top games.
1. I can't really find any high-quality ones that don't cost more than i can currently spare.
2. I have no where to put it.
3. I'm honestly not sure i'd use it enough.
But despite those factors, i'd probably use it for making small models/kits/toys that i could then sell.
I've gotten custom/bespoke table top miniature orders in already so should be a little profitable. At the very least i'm expecting enough orders to float my own projects. If not then i can always put it on a rent-a-3d-printer site.
But custom parts, models, PC case fixes, miniatures, bespoke work and a few secret endeavors for a hyper niche market i stumbled upon.
I'm not sure how well it would work in the house with the smell of melted/burnt plastic but I'm not sure how it would work keeping it in the garage either since it's a bit of a dustier environment.
Otherwise I'm just going to wait until they are way more consumer friendly, cheaper and require less maintenance. I'm really excited about the idea though.
http://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/27gttk/my_journey_into_3d_printing/
also - can a printer take different materials depending on project?
can you really print gold?
Depends on the type, Nasa prints with metal for jet engines, China prints with concrete for houses.
Gold? Yes probably on specialist printers.
Some printers have their own software for the real world size calibration.
As for manual, get some HQ measuring equipment build to scale in program, print off rapid prototype at LQ, measure, tweak, reprint HQ.
Again for the $300 micro 3D it supports: ABS, PLA, nylon, chameleon, (don't know this material ->) professional.
The newest generation of Rerap, are being designed for PCB printing. So that will lend a hand to self replication.
but still loads of fun and it's really cool to be finally able to hold stuff you made on a computer screen
Tho, it sure is a new thing and so it's not as easy as ''press print'' yet, it's a learning curve but a fun one in my opinion
The use will be a bunch of engineering related stuff, building an internet radio at the moment and being able to customize every tiny part in the chassis really helps, another project will be an advanced wristwatch. Some robotics stuff as well!
Will probably not print any art I do but functiomal boardgame related models would be fun!
I think the two things that will make it take off more with the general public is price and reliability, there's no fire and forget extrusion printers, and the ones that are reliable have industry prices.
Even the best extruding printers will require tweaking, and they will even fail now and then. Filament can also create problems depending on scenarios such as moisture in the air collecting in it.
Then there's the third thing people wouldn't even think about: Printing is slow!
For high quality and reliable prints on a good printer even small things can take hours, big chunky 10^3cm-range things can take a whole day, and then we add a tiny failure halfway into the print which is easily fixable but the entire print will have to be restarted.
Good thread. A lot of great information.
Yeah FDM has it's share of issues when it comes to quality. right now it may be the best when it comes to price per foot in terms of building bigger objects. Since a build plate is only so large it comes down to being able to break a design into smaller pieces and engineer them to fit together after the parts are printed.
The print in my profile pic is around 5.5 feet printed only on consumer grade FDM printers. Put together after the pieces are printed.
Also, if anyone has a 3d model that they want to see printed, contact me. I'm looking for a non-thingiverse beautiful model to print so I can put something novel on our new site, in exchange I'll print it for free and ship it to you. Normally that's a shapeways service of over a hundred dollars.
Thanks for listening.
That is super interesting, that guy really has an awesome job!
Only if you invite a friend over, and you both wear some ganny-bras on your heads while printing!
jokes on you, I'm the guy on the right!
so...so I guess this means
Here's some slightly bigger pics from the CES floor earlier this year.
This one shows the size comparison to the people walking below it.
Fun to make, forever to print haha. I think the final count was just under 300 pieces
(3 days printing almost non stop on 40 FDM Rep 2's)
Anyways, there's a ton of stuff to do with this, I'm currently using a mix of 3ds max, solidworks and zbrush to create models and I've never had any technical issues with the printing.