3-D Printing Coming To The High Street?

[John]

"Staples Announces In-Store 3-D Printing Service"

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/11/staples-goes-3-d/

John

[Iain Ogilvie]

Thanks John - that's a very interesting development - will be keeping an eye on this!

Iain

[John]

It's certainly an interesting development. I suppose how useful it will be depends on the resolution it can produce parts at?

J

[MossieOz]

There has been no direct announcement of service starts, so it may not come off or to all Staple branches.

How much interest is there for 3D Printing?

I ask becuase it is one of the services I'd like to offer along with CAD and 3D designs.

[Radleigh]

I'm guessing CAD & 3D design isn't easy to just 'pick' up? Quite interested in learning it but I'm not the sort to just sit and learn stuff

[Test Graham]

There's a number of interesting comments in the N Gauge Forum, where a number of people have been experimenting with this for some time. The problems they've encountered are quite educational.

http://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?board=136.0

[MossieOz]

I've been doing 3D for 10+ years and more detailed CAD 6 months or so.

The step to 3D prointing is not a small one, as there is a decision to be made over scale and strength of the printed parts.

[Caerbannog]

I suppose 3D printing could become a next step in after market stuff first. It is simply a different matter to create 3D data on you computer than to move some vectors in AI or Corel or so to make a custom decal sheet. So I doubt it will be something for the vast majority.

My brother in law is working for a mobile phone company and they have state-of-the-art 3D printers for prototyping: They can not only print 3D in colours they can even print lubricated moving parts! Try this in resin :-)

Concerning the resolution I read that it is already possible to download the 3D data of a vinyl LP and print it - I mean it would not make much sense if the resolution is not top-notch.

When the 3D printers spead the country (we can expect several new "low price " 3D printer to appear for the consumer market in 2013) it could become interesting to provide 3D download data for either entire models or just improvenment parts as currently provided by the aftermarket.

And: Where there are printers there will be scanners. So one can build a master as one would do now - scann this and multiplicate it with the printer (dunno if this will be cheaper than resin casting but it will be less messy and open other possiblilities as well), or trade the data for "self-printing": Same concept as paper modellers use for years.

This certainly opens more possibilities for piracy as well. Or how about this: Ever wanted a 1:48 scale Tiger Moth? Scann the Matchbox/Revell parts of their 1:32 release and downscale the data. Or increase your Heller Stampe SV4 by 4% to get it in 1:48 scale :-)

So put together: In 10 years all we need for "model building" is a computer and a 3D printer - no cutters, no adhesives and no airbrush. Just download and print. My wife will be very happy about my hobby then - I can go shopping with her while the printer is building up layer by layer of my ultimate whatever. Brave new world... :-D

Edited February 13, 2013 by Caerbannog