Another breakthru in 3D printing...

[tburzio]

The boffins at MIT have made another breakthru. This new desktop printer is 4x more resolution than the current desktops (25 microns instead of 100).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/for ... 3d-printer

Some of the live steamers are already printing rolling stock, and I know of one guy printing parts for metal casting of a challenger!

[Tamper84]

Holy crap. Thats nice, but how much does one of those cost? I just kinda skimmed the article...

Chris

[LivingLegend]

Having glanced over the Kickstarter project, I find pluses and minuses.

They are using cured resin as their modeling media..... Which is great for making durable models and master patterns. Unfortunately, not so great for sacrificial pattens for investment casting purposes. It won't burn out. But then, other than wax, most other forms of available RP media won't burn out well either.

And there is the matter of small build area 4.9x4.9x6.5. Nice for smaller parts (structural and detail/"gingerbread") for our purposes. A possible limitation.

Progress in the RP area is moving at a fast clip. A few years from now, the big WOW factor might finally arrive for a home desktop RP printer.... And at a knock your socks off price. At the present? No cigar. Take the low capabilities and resolution of inkjet printers and their high prices when first brought into the market place and compare them to today's printers. It will be the same for RP printers down the line.

I was looking a large build area pro printer a couple of years ago.... Used resin hardened by a light beam from a DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector. Very attractive machine were it not for the casting pattern burnout problem posed by it's resin media..

25u resolution is definitely getting better, for a desktop, but still shy of the highest resolution now available.

Just remember.... The ultimate in anything ain't here yet.

LL

[WJH]

Cheap printer = expensive media.

[tburzio]

Cheap printer = expensive media.

Yep, but it beats the heck out of 15 pounds of brass curls in the shop recycling bin!

[mjahn]

There's definitely times when it's worth it, especially if you assign any value to your time or your time is limited. I recently had my trailing truck brake heads printed. It took an hour and a half, maybe 2 to draw and upload but then they were done and I could move on to the next part. I can only guess how long it would have taken to whittle them out of stock.