United3dArtists Archive

I knew there were 3D printers but I didn't know they made moving parts of objects also. Check out this link.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz ... r_embedded"

That was incredible!
I'm still not sure how the lasers can
pickup the shapes of hidden surfaces. I would guess that
the computer guesses the rest of the object, like I am guessing now...I guess.

I'm guessing they left out a few of the scanning steps.

i guess the parts are not hidden in the proces.. coz they are making layers. If that works like a stereolithography. But i dont get how it can be scanned. I think that they had to postprocess it anyway and model it in computer.

If you scan with visible light yes but you can scan with ultrasonic or radiosignals(radiology) which would work right through the material.......

The video shows someone clicking on the screw/spiral part on a screen. Still a good program to separate and complete that part. What about the separate jaw piece? Maybe scanned like Rayman said.

I don't see that it is so surprising that 3D printers can make moving parts. They make parts. If you move them then they are moving parts. If you designed a tool to manufacture like this you wouldn't scan the tool because it doesn't exist yet. You'd model each part and send each part to the printer separately. You could make many things that way as long as the plastic or substance is strong enough.

rayman: sounds possible and very expensive :)

about the moving parts.... standard stereolithography can make moving patrs aswell. It works the way that there is used material that will vanish later in proces. So it can make seperated "subobjects".
That means that it makes one piece object, then you "wash out" the material that is redundant and its purpose is only to hold the subparts where they belong. After that you have model that has working mechanical parts.

I had a model printed once at my local university, that printer was probably one of the simplest and cheapest there is and still they had managed to make some moving parts there as well. Just like Bitkar said, such a printer uses a material that dissolves in some kind of acid. This is not a very economical solution though, I really like the printer in the video more.

There are some 3D print on demand services, that do some pretty great stuff. Not to expensive, and lots of materials to choose from.

http://www.shapeways.com
http://www.ponoko.com

supercool

I wonder how cheap/expensive it would be to have one of our characters 3D printed?

It's pretty expensive to print larger models, most people just shrink their models so they are really small. I have an account on Shapeways and I checked how much it would cost to print my Cylon Centurion, it would cost somewhere around 200 Euros (280 dollars).

Steinie wrote:I wonder how cheap/expensive it would be to have one of our characters 3D printed?

the 250 euro for a mide sized model is only for the master.......
you can have a mold made from that master so your per piece price can be drasticaly cut.
if you got a great model that you want to sell..... its possible....for a very good price the more pieces the lower the price..
Peter

Here's a different kind of 3D printer.
http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/biop ... arma-2156/"

Finis wrote:Here's a different kind of 3D printer.
http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/biop ... arma-2156/"

Cool!