Any question answered...

You can allot, but you cannot alot.

It's a pretty specialist bit of kit and has only just started to become accessible to 'normal' people and hobbyists but it will never be a standard office gadget.

Paging Soul

cheers EEI & mdcc_tester. will certainly look into those. almost all parts are in now, can't wait to start building...

It's a pretty specialist bit of kit and...will never be a standard office gadget

Although Thomas J Watson was misquoted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquote), the thrust of the comment wrongly attributed to him was common thinking in the early computer age. The fact is, people find uses for gadgets as the price comes down, which brings the price down further, which allows other people to find uses for them, ad not quite infinitum. You might be able to turn a small profit in the mean time, but I'd expect 3d printers to be 1/10th of the current price within a decade and in place at every office where 3d objects are designed, from architects to jewellers.

a decade? I give them 2-3 years max

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/727200/3d_printer

If they work out how to get it to use something strong enough (no idea what this magical substance is) you could print parts or frames.

the stuff is ABS, it is hard, but not that hard, maybe brakes, botle holders....
I would not trust a stem or a seatpost or a saddle or a handelbars.

YouTube - CES2010: Makerbot 3D printer

That guy sucks as a salesman.

Should be selling hoovers.

If they work out how to get it to use something strong enough (no idea what this magical substance is) you could print parts or frames.

Some printers can already print in metal (bronze alloy, steel, stainless steel and cobalt chrome)

That guy sucks as a salesman.

Engineers usually do strangely enough.

Rik - The machine (Zprinter 450) in that first video currently sells for £30k, that's a shit ton of money. There's no way I can see it costing 3k in 2-3 years time.

The point that 3d printers/rapid prototype machines will be more accessible in a few years is valid (I imagine that the hack/OS type of machine will progress most rapidly) so surely that means if I want one and want it to pay for itself then I should do it ASAP.

The main reasons for me buying it is because I'm a massive nerd and love this kind of thing, it will probably relate heavily to my degree major project, I want to make cool shit. The money aspect comes in to it because I can't justify just buying one for my own entertainment, I know it's not going to make me rich but if I can cover most of the costs of the machine I'll be happy.

I have a load of sums and research to do now but I'll probably post that stuff up once I've done it incase I've missed something glaringly obvious.

Nanotechnology will superceed any of this shite, albeit given more time.

printing 3d plastic shapes, how twee. How about some dust that you rub on your tits and it makes them bounce?

Or nano tofu that you eat and makes your piss magnetic. This is the future

There'll be nano bots in jokes shops that give you gout, give it to your mate laugh at his gouty legs. No it's ok the cure's only 99p. Awesome

MakerBot Thing-O-Matic Kit .

That will probably be the machine I will buy, it is no where near as advanced as the one in the video and uses a totally different method to print models.

There's a prof at Bath uni who has made a 3d printer for £400. Has open sourced it too so that everyone can hack and improve it. reprap it's called.

They will be everywhere in a few years.

printing 3d plastic shapes, how twee.

How about a laser sintered stainless steel rocket engine?

Or what about the idea of 3d-printing houses to incorporate termite colony style air conditioning into the walls?

Or maybe the (so far very speculative) idea of printing continuous flow chemical processing plants? (just think of the drug market / terrorist implications)

Even twee plastic shapes have their uses. I heard one story that rather than trying to keep stock of all the breakable plastic bits of their equipment, the US army print some of their replacement components.

There's a prof at Bath uni who has made a 3d printer for £400. Has open sourced it too so that everyone can hack and improve it. reprap it's called.

They will be everywhere in a few years.

Certainly they will be everywhere that that there are geeks who think they are cool. They'll probably put some useful pressure on commercial manufacturers to improve, but how long it will take before they can compete economically in anything but the most contrived situations remains to be seen.

I was initially quite sceptical of 3d printing as a general purpose way of making things. I still think people are underestimating the awesomeness* of a lot of the manufacturing techniques they are hoping to replace, but i think my initial guess that it was a stupid approach (entropy) doesn't stack up, and i'm becoming more optimistic that 3d printing will develop its own awesomeness that will stand up to (but be different from) traditional manufacturing.

Mostly i'm hoping the open source 3d printing culture is a beach-head for rolling back the magicisation of the manufactured world.

• all the banging and scraping in traditional manufacturing does important things to material micro-structure. Whether aligning the grain boundaries of metals in a drop-forged component or the chains chains of polymers and their crystallinity in an inflated PET plastic bottle, or polishing something smooth to optical precision, traditional manufacturing can work simultaneously on the macro-structure and micro-structure, while 3d printing works only at the scale of its print head's resolution.
  
  

3d printing's major points are:
Access to the insides allows construction of more or less arbitrary shapes, from a small pallette of input materials, so supporting a simple CAD model -> 3d object process.
Build costs are a function of object volume and precision, not complexity.
Any more?

It's around £600 for reprap stuff but it requires you to know someone who can print the components for you (reproducing rapid prototyping = reprap), the makerbot is kind of based around the same ethos as all the open source reprap stuff but offers it in a convienient (semi) reliable and tested package for not that much more.

Anyway, thanks for all the input, I still have no idea on predicting future sales but I guess that's pretty much impossible. I'll just have to take the risk and see what happens.

Ah - i see. Not a bad plan to be in at the early development stage then.

The reprap one is mostly made of the stuff it produces - get matey with someone who has one and he can print you one out!

I foresee a market in scanning and 3d printing erm...body parts. You heard it here first kids.

3D bioprinters are already here and have been for a while - building replica hearts made out of gels. Unless you mean producing something like a RealDoll?

I foresee a market in scanning and 3d printing erm...body parts. You heard it here first kids.

£1000 for a printer? I'm in. How many didlos per day can I print out? How expensive is maintenance and materials necessary to run it?

£1000 for a printer? I'm in. How many didlos per day can I print out? How expensive is maintenance and materials necessary to run it?

The rep rap can run on a 10v battery and uses 'ink' made from potato starch. So with a solar panel and a few square metres of land you can keep it running. Or you could pay for higher quality ABS. But still - the objects they produce are rock solid. My knowledge of dildos is limited but I assume it would produce something not entirely comfortable for any impassioned use.

Make a doodle out of Monster Munch, and you're almost there.

What flavour?

it would produce something not entirely comfortable for any impassioned use.

Yes, they'd be quite big. I just need a 3D scanner.

Could you print out shapes such as the cycloc bike hanger?

Yes*

*but really small