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Alex writes -
My name is Alex and I've been following MAKE for the past year now and have really enjoyed everything the magazine and website have to offer. Today when my fiance and I were out running some errands in downtown Toronto we wandered into the Umbra Concept Store and after looking around for a few minutes I got really excited when I saw that they had a rapid prototyping machine right there in the store. I asked about it and it turns out that they have the Umbra designers come into the store to work on their designs while allowing customers to ask them questions. On the desk next to the machine there were a few samples that they had made with the printer. Unfortunately I only had time to snap a quick photo with my phone which I have attached. I thought you might find this interesting.
Makes me wish I didn't move to Victoria from TO earlier this year.
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Why? It's just a 3D printer. This is called marketing. It's not actually useful to have this printer in a retail outlet when there are 100's of shops in mississauga with better machines and likely better technicians. This is to reinforce the Umbra brand statement. So the only thing you're missing is the opportunity to walk through the store and try to imagine what a layperson might think about Umbra and all the little plastic things. Presumably they think that the plastic things are of greater value because of the hi-tech futuristic machine thing that is used to prototype them right there in the store.
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The printer in the photo looks like an older Dimension model fused deposition modeling 3D-Printer. My guess is its a Dimension BST. They cost about 20 grand.
Web site is http://www.dimensionprinting.com. They are fun toys, but I've never used it for anything than printing out neato gadgets and gizmos.
-CM
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pah! My Uni has a laser consolidation unit. It'l print anything out of various metals and up to 99.8% density.
Unfortunately it's very slow and extremely expensive. i.e . i can look but not touch
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meh! That is a worthless Dimension model fused deposition modeling 3-d printer using plasticine .01 mm orb shaped media with a melt temp of a mere 376.77 celcius and a final cool temp hardness of only 5 DPH on the Vickers Hardness Test. I made a better one last summer out of a modified Legos Mindstorms kit, an Epson 800 inkjet printer, my 1,00,000,000 volt telsa coil's flyback transformer, and using liquid titanium as media. I'm also tired of these capitalist corporations trying to make a buck and using the latest technology to stay at the cutting edge. What do they think this is, a free country.
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Those are really cool, 3D printers I mean. I saw one at a London show in 2001 and was well impressed - it was compact, and was working quickly away whittling some components out of a plastic block.
The immediate thoughts here being of being able to download and manufacture all kinds of components (for assembley) at home. (this could of course extend to other areas, like online textile machines - 'print' your own clothes) As the tech progresses and cheapens, there won't be so many limits to the materials that can be used; the run-off's can be recycled so there's no waste.
Couple that with downloadable printable circuits, and you have an upcoming open-source hardware revolution.
Then try punched-hole instruction sets, and magnetic ink. Print your own ROMs. Depending on how precise an electronic typewriter delete head can get - print your own rewriteable (erasable) ROMs. It's all well within do-able, the point being it's way more sustainable.
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