3D Printing and Modeling: What's in the future for us???

The future is now....meet the Replicator II.

store.makerbot.com/replicator2.html

At only $2,199 it's one of the cheapest 3-d printers on the market, and you can be sure that price will only drop as the technology becomes cheaper and newer iterations of the machine come out.

(But personally I'd rather have a laser cutter at home, or maybe this....http://knkusa.com/shop/knk-zing/ No fancy ventilation system to deal with and a lot cheaper.)

I’d love to go on one of the online shops or maybe even the manufactures site and order the files necessary to print out a 3D kit. Let’s say a car from Tamiya, to print out in plastic, transparent and rubber. Opps! I got glue on the windshield! No problem, print out the replacement. Buy the entire kit or replacement parts files online.

No need to go to the store or wait for the big brown truck. Own 200 kits on a few discs or other storage device, get all that self space back! Only print them when you’re ready to build!

The major play I see with these is that they would be great for building your own parts to detail your model with.

In my opinion, 3d Printers will eventually kill photo etch.

  "At only $2,199 it's one of the cheapest 3-d printers on the market."

Boy, that is a lot of kits :-)

But I certainly agree that I'd like a laser cutter system.  I also would like to see more, and easier to use, businesses offering custom laser cutting.

Posted by Chromdome35 on 10-21-2012 5:46 AM

"In my opinion, 3d Printers will eventually kill photo etch."

I could defenitly see that happening in the near future. It is exactly how white metal got replaced with resin. And there are several AM companies who make there masters with 3d printers. So they are getting the know how of cad/cam. When the price comes down they will stop making masters and just print the final product.

Being an avid modeller AND a CAD designer by trade, I see limited use of 3D printers by the average person. The quality of even the best 3D printer is no match for the output of a plastic injection mold. You will still have to file, sand and otherwise finish the part for it to be useful. That being said, I am really close to buying a Makerbot printer. I own a seat of 3D modelling software. If I buy a printer it will be used for one off creation of parts for modelling and other projects. The learning curve for modelling software is pretty high also. Of course, you can download all kinds of files for use in the printer but very little is of practical use.

There are too many 3D Printing threads! But I'll revive this one anyway since the Tag Cloud keeps pointing to it.

I see a lot of yakking here but no data, which leads me to believe it's a bunch of armchair modelers worrying about 3D Printing but not actually using it. No pics, it didn't happen. 

So here are my pics, an entire model (well maybe 99.5%), 3D Printed from my own CAD design from my own research, no pirating at all:

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/general_discussion/f/9/t/155741.aspx

Yes it's possible, and yes there are problems and it's expensive and it can be a pain, and no a home printer isn't going to do this for you, fuggetaboutit! But it's possible...

"In my opinion, 3d Printers will eventually kill photo etch."

Nonsense. 

Print resolution isn't near PE quality today, and even if it does get there, you won't change the fact that plastics don't have the stiffness or strength to hold up during handling.

Today you're hard pressed to get parts with "wires" under 0.7mm (~ 0.030", or 1/32"). I made stanchions for my Revell Firefighter re-do at this size, and they were flimsy like wet tissue paper and a terror to work with.

Revell Firefighter, with entire cabin structure and most topside details redone in 3DP:

The 1/32" diameter stanchions- almost impossible to work with, and still a bit too clunky:

Another issue, the process tends to warp flimsy parts... even in the multijet process, droplets go down hot then cool... leading to unpredictable warpages depending on part orientation- which in turn is random at most printing houses. Here's a warped ladder for Firefighter... I gave up on it and used a molded HO scale ladder.

But you can get some usable results. Here are my fire monitors, and those dished handwheels would have been very tricky as PE parts!

Cabin, fire monitors, tower, stanchions were all 3D Printed.