Yet more 3d printing - getting cheaper
Fellow eightbar member and Creative Director Brian Peaston pinged me today with some fantastic links.
The first is to Desktop factory which by its very name shoudl give the game away. Desktop rapid fabrication with a 3d printer. A 3d printer for $5000 thats quite a significant price point. Maybe I should sell my Second Life islands, as we now have plenty, and buy one of these now. Its getting very close ot being normal. At this price its looking veyr promising.
The other is very related and a good looking service in principle. Ponoko is a service that lets you build things and get them made, and then sell patterns to others. Now this is sort of local to this site, but it is veyr very long tail. I will be signing up and having a go. Who knows I may build all the xmas present this year :-)
November 30th, 2007 at 2:25 am
Early reports regarding Desktop Factory’s material are promising. Unfortunate the build volume is so small.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Hmm. The price is getting close to conceivable. But did you catch the price of the material? Sounds kind of low at $1 per cubic inch. But if the maximum build is 5″x5″x5″ that $125 per “page”! And I thought my color laser printer was expensive at $.08 per page…
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:22 pm
So, if I follow, how long before we’re able to shop on-line and “print” up our purchases on a 3D printer? Perhaps some assembly required, for moving parts, etc, but still … Am I on the right track?
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:57 pm
@Dave You already can shop online and print up your purchases. I think it is the scale of the commercialization and pervasiveness of the devices.
This is a new development in the cost reduction and the potential for the devices to be in homes.
Technically moving parts can alreday be printed with some of the more expensive devices. The military have a spy plane drone 98% printed in the field.
How long before the santa claus machine is in every home? We may be 3-4 years away, but the rapid explosion in interest in 3d design via second life and even sketchup means we already have a distribution mechanism for content. This is what was missing 8 years ago when I first got interested and the machine were $250k down from $1million.
I am nto sure if you have seen this post from a while back using fabjectory as the service to print my avatar.
The desire to create physical/virtual crossovers, and a mass market in business and social life in virtual worlds all point to quite near future.
So soon :-)
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
@epredator. Thanks. Yes, I saw your post re fabjectory and a demo of it at SLCC in Chicago earlier this year. 3-4 years away from the santa claus machine in every home means that my two young sons will likely not remember a world when everyone didn’t have one. Wild.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:17 pm
These are cool and will undoubtedly be household items within the next 20 years.
If you want one now you can build it yourself using the instructions from the RepRap project at http://www.reprap.org .
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:58 pm
[...] Desktop Factory: Breakthrough Low-cost 3D Printing - “With the introduction of the Desktop Factory 3D printer, priced disruptively lower than the nearest competitive offering, Desktop Factory becomes the leader in high performance low-cost 3D printing technologies.” - Via Eightbar. [...]
December 4th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Hmm, looks like the truth hurts so my previous comment has been censored, its a good job there are other websites and journalists that respect free speech so you will have to find the other postings or come out of the closet and stand behind your statements epredator!
December 4th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
@tina I have added a seperate post just now to explain. This is mine and my friends blog. We surely reserve the right to keep things on topic. I self censored. No big deal.
I stand behind the fact that I am willing to share with my colleagues an oppinion. Sure we can share it wider (as you have done). As I have pointed out I already had.
Each blog and place does nto have to have the same level of detail. Eightbar is light hearted, enjoyable and innovative and a set of IBMers.
My personal blog is that, personal. My internal blog is aimed at a different audience and playing with different concepts, just as terra nova was different again.
So I am not in any closet. It is handy that you are forcing the issue and making decisions for me, its like having a press agent :-) thanks.
I would have liked to have had the freedom of my own information and my own speech but you appear to have decided to take that away from me.