3D printer

http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

On Thu, 14 May 2015 18:12:20 +0100, Ed Cryer wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

Probably not, but I could.

Ed Cryer wrote:
http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

If it can print money, I'll take it.

Otherwise, not so much.

The machine has to be robust enough,
to be able to print off £1000 in
large denomination bills. Then
I might be interested. There might
even be room in my jail cell,
for that gadget.

In Canada, our currency has switched
to plastic bills, which is why this
is a possibility. All I need is the
right color of feedstock. And a lot
of gullible store clerks to accept
my new currency.

Paul

On Thu, 14 May 2015 18:12:20 +0100, Ed Cryer
wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

I know very very little about 3D printers but an acquaintance just
bought one for $500. From talking to him there are a couple items
that sounded important. One is the size of the object that the
printer can print and the other is whether the bed is heated. Unheated
beds are said to be more likely to result in the bottom of what you
are printing shrinking while the printing is going on (maybe even
come loose from the bed) which creates less accurate results. He also
mentioned the ability to use different types of plastic. Sounded like
the most common plastic that's used gets soft at temperatures as low
as 150 degrees, which means if you left a printed item in your car in
the middle of summer in AZ it might deform. I had been thinking such
a printer might be useful to print tail light lenses for old cars but
he said he doesn't think the plastic would be very clear and
translucent looking, more of a cloudy look.

Paul wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:
http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

If it can print money, I'll take it.

Otherwise, not so much.

The machine has to be robust enough,
to be able to print off £1000 in
large denomination bills. Then
I might be interested. There might
even be room in my jail cell,
for that gadget.

In Canada, our currency has switched
to plastic bills, which is why this
is a possibility. All I need is the
right color of feedstock. And a lot
of gullible store clerks to accept
my new currency.

Paul

I thought that 3D printing might prove useful. I had a notion that you
could clone keys, plastic bits for gardening equipment, broken pots,
door hinges etc. Just place the original in front of a monitor screen,
rotate it, answer all the questions that the thing asks such as "Cast
iron, bronze, hard plastic, or maybe gold?" and then wait a bit while
the wheels churn out your thing.

This 1,000 British pound sterling box of tricks is advertised as being a
useful device for seeing what your CAD on-screen thing looks like in
real space.

Not quite what the pundits originally told us on the BBC.
A bit like when they told us 30 years ago how CDs were indestructible,
how you could smear jam on them, throw them across the room, or even put
hot cups on them. And then one day I simply scratched one!

Ed

Ed Cryer wrote:
Paul wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:
http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

If it can print money, I'll take it.

Otherwise, not so much.

The machine has to be robust enough,
to be able to print off £1000 in
large denomination bills. Then
I might be interested. There might
even be room in my jail cell,
for that gadget.

In Canada, our currency has switched
to plastic bills, which is why this
is a possibility. All I need is the
right color of feedstock. And a lot
of gullible store clerks to accept
my new currency.

Paul

I thought that 3D printing might prove useful. I had a notion that you
could clone keys, plastic bits for gardening equipment, broken pots,
door hinges etc. Just place the original in front of a monitor screen,
rotate it, answer all the questions that the thing asks such as "Cast
iron, bronze, hard plastic, or maybe gold?" and then wait a bit while
the wheels churn out your thing.

This 1,000 British pound sterling box of tricks is advertised as being a
useful device for seeing what your CAD on-screen thing looks like in
real space.

Not quite what the pundits originally told us on the BBC.
A bit like when they told us 30 years ago how CDs were indestructible,
how you could smear jam on them, throw them across the room, or even put
hot cups on them. And then one day I simply scratched one!

Ed

There's supposed to be a printer that uses powdered metal.
But it isn't cheap.

They did some work here, to make stuff from aluminum.

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/feature...217468_en.html

The good news, is there is more available than just plastic.
Plastic is good though, to show what the technology might
be capable of.

http://makezine.com/2012/02/01/an-op...ng-3d-printer/

"...stainless steel and gold"

So you can print off a Rolex or two.

Paul

On Thu, 14 May 2015 18:12:20 +0100, Ed Cryer
wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

What *I* really need is such a device to produce STENCILS. The price
of stencils is outrageous! Maybe with a laser to burn characters in
a plastic PET sheet.

Peter Jason wrote:
On Thu, 14 May 2015 18:12:20 +0100, Ed Cryer
wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

What *I* really need is such a device to produce STENCILS. The price
of stencils is outrageous! Maybe with a laser to burn characters in
a plastic PET sheet.

I can find references to using a plotter for the job.

http://www.signs101.com/forums/showt...-using-Plotter

And I could find this article.

http://www.hackeda.com/blog/start-pr...for-about-200/

Paul

Ashton Crusher wrote:

I know very very little about 3D printers but an acquaintance just
bought one for $500. From talking to him there are a couple items
that sounded important. One is the size of the object that the
printer can print and the other is whether the bed is heated. Unheated
beds are said to be more likely to result in the bottom of what you
are printing shrinking while the printing is going on (maybe even
come loose from the bed) which creates less accurate results. He also
mentioned the ability to use different types of plastic. Sounded like
the most common plastic that's used gets soft at temperatures as low
as 150 degrees, which means if you left a printed item in your car in
the middle of summer in AZ it might deform. I had been thinking such
a printer might be useful to print tail light lenses for old cars but
he said he doesn't think the plastic would be very clear and
translucent looking, more of a cloudy look.

I'm just a lurker, here to laugh at Microsoft from my little world of
Linux and Win XP. But I do have a 3D printer, a Makerbot Cupcake - the
kit that the now big company (technically now division of Stratasys, an
even bigger company) made when they were starting up.

I haven't got time to do a full overview, but plastic-wise there are a
lot of options besides the two common types which are PLA and ABS.
Heated beds are if not essentual, then very very nice, for ABS (which
is all I've used). PLA has a lower melting temperature and can apparantly
be used without a heated bed, and if you do have one it doesn't have to
be at skin burning temperatures. I extrude ABS at 225C onto a heated bed
at 120C, but I believe it can be melted slowly at 180C. PLA has
different specs, but you can find all sorts of info on plastics and other
3D printer stuff at the Wiki of the well established Open Source printer
project RepRap (http://www.reprap.org/).

Besides the printing materials, there are an ever growing list of
specially made blends for different properties such as flexibility,
better transparancy and even wood (LayWood I think that's called).
There's some good info at http://www.3ders.org/

You could probably do car lenses with a well tuned 3D printer, a fancy
plastic and/or finishing with acetone vapour (look it up). You probably
wouldn't get them as clear as injection moulded parts (though a bit of
diffusion might not be a bad thing in all cases), and small sharp
details like ridges in the plastic might need to be hand finished (the
file can be a handy tool at times).

SLA 3D printers are another option, but the prints are weaker and size
more limited. buying lots of different coloured liquid resins (which
are hardened to make the models) might be expensive or impossible too.

Oh and remember that all the FDM printers (melty squirty plastic like
the one I've got) are basically the same technology, so look at the
hard specs and perhaps the software design, don't get swayed by
meaningless marketing guff.

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Peter Jason wrote:
On Thu, 14 May 2015 18:12:20 +0100, Ed Cryer
wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/lwmrsvd

Could I do anything worthwhile with this?

Ed

What *I* really need is such a device to produce STENCILS. The price
of stencils is outrageous! Maybe with a laser to burn characters in
a plastic PET sheet.

Laser cutter, or CNC router for big stuff, is definately the best way to
go. 3D printers can be used for stencils (and I have done), but it takes
a long time to build up a big one ( big in 3D printer terms is
100x100mm), and you loose definitian.

Chinese laser engravers sold on Ebay might be able to do what you want,
depending on how cheap you need things.

If you only need really light duty stencils (or you don't mind doing a
new one each job), you could look into CNC paper cutting machines which
are used for Scrapbooking and the like. Some are relatively cheap.

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