3d printer...consumer version

spider2cool

I was thumbing through cool gadgets online, and i came accross this cool devise. What used to cost more than your car is now available for $5,000 dollers. I am trying to imagine how cool it would be to print out my 3d models and i get happy in the pants just thinking about it. could be a worth it investment. They say in 2010 its price will go down another 4k. please comment on what you think of this think.

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> click here for the 3d printer

Vailias

its still more than my car. :P

however it is very sweet. Replicators here we come... sorta

Neo_God

My college has a 3d printer, which I am aching to try out, but being a freshman I am limited a great deal by what I can and cannot use. Though at the moment you have 2 choices of resin color, transparent red or flesh tone.

spider2cool

here is some pics of what a more high end 3d printer can do.
(you can also go to the Gallery and see more pics)
http://www.ems-usa.com/sample_parts_Z510.html

CrazyButcher

we got plenty of those at university, too. The engineers also have a "prototyping" system which can create solid metal pieces, too. Also old 3d printers which really used paper that is cut and glued together, looking kinda funny.

Richard Kain

It all depends on how fast the thing is, and how expensive the resin raw materials are. If it is inexpensive and fast enough, you could use it to make limited edition runs of your work. Sell those for the right price and the thing could pay for itself in a year or two. Of course, this is assuming that your work is good and popular enough to make people want to purchase resin copies of it.

Also, it would be good to see how this thing handles irregular and non-mechanical designs. From the examples on their site, its all machine parts and regular geometric shapes. I want to see how this thing handles a posed bipedal model.

Jeremy Wright

I would really love to have one. 5k is still to much for me, though.

I would also like to see how it handles complex shapes with sharp angles (less than 90 degrees).

Very cool.

spider2cool

http://www.ems-usa.com/sample_parts_characters.html check out that link it has more organic stuff. go to the gallery and you can see other groups of photos
http://www.ems-usa.com/Gallery.html