A while back I said easy access to advanced software made smaller shops capable of high level design and engineering and used the Motoczysz C1 and Hayabusa V8 as examples. Well, hold on to your hat, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Some time ago I read a few brief articles on 3D printers and thought, hmm… interesting, after which I pretty much forgot about them. Seems a few folks have been thinking about them a lot and doing some actual work in the area. A 3D printer can build a 3D object by printing successive layers of different materials until the entire object exists as a hard copy. Blueprint to finished piece at the touch of a button. Think of the possibilities. Actually, some people have thought a lot about the possibilities and speculated about the outcome. Of course, these machines are self replicating. Think about that! Think about jobs and a whole different economy. But on a more mundane level, with the proper input you could build almost anything, … mundane, right. I noticed this over at Marginal Revolution and started following links. The future is coming fast and it’s interesting, very interesting.
aaron says
i was at a motorcycle dynamics seminar with tony foale in vancouver a few weeks back. in attendance were a few engineers workiing in the motorcycle and aftermarket fields (norton and motobits are the ones i recall right now, there were a few others….) in one on my discussions over a lunch break, rapid prototypers came up. what blew my mind? apparently there is one that prints a female image. in a glue and sand material. full size with thermal expansion factors for the desired final material. pour in molten metal, and go!
you don’t just get a plastic piece for display and fit use, or making a female sand mould by hand, you get a sandcast mould ready to go. wow…..