Thread: How handy would this be !

The Uni of Western Sydney has three of the Rapid Prototyping machines (3D printers) including the 'Dimension' shown on that clip, and a 3D scanner. I use both in my degree-its a lot of fun. Usually we draw with 3D CAD or 3D modelling and then print. Last year, we scanned a student's face and printed a copy for the sake of it. I have had parts spin cast in pewter and investment cast in brass from masters made in ABS successfully.
Commercially, this process is quite expensive, at uni we only pay for materials which makes it cheap enough to experiment with.

Cheers,
Mark

Thats amazing & very cool

Originally Posted by longing4alandy

The Uni of Western Sydney has three of the Rapid Prototyping machines (3D printers) including the 'Dimension' shown on that clip, and a 3D scanner. I use both in my degree-its a lot of fun. Usually we draw with 3D CAD or 3D modelling and then print. Last year, we scanned a student's face and printed a copy for the sake of it. I have had parts spin cast in pewter and investment cast in brass from masters made in ABS successfully.
Commercially, this process is quite expensive, at uni we only pay for materials which makes it cheap enough to experiment with.

Cheers,
Mark

so MATE if i was to give you a ......... and a slab you could ..........

That is cool.

Now, how do I con work into buying one!

Holy Crap! I want one!!!

unbloodybelievable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Been round for a while - there was an article on it in the August 2008 Silicon Chip. There are a variety of different systems, some cheaper, some higher resolution.

The process was invented by students at MIT in the early 1990s, and I first came across it then.

Costs are coming down, and increases in computing power have made it more and more affordable, but to make objects of any size and with fine resolution still requires a lot of data processing, and obviously the larger the size capability the more the cost of the machine (anyone priced A3 printers lately relative to A4 ones?).

John

Amazing stuff. I love technology when it does things like that.

$3,000 for the scanning bit is pretty reasonable.

Anyone know how much a 3d printer like that costs?