Make:

This ain't new,we learn 3D printing at college here in quebec and the scanner thing?

Aguy came about 4 month ago to show us what his company(all made in quebec) made. a hand held scanner the size of a big hair dryer than can do the exact same thing,but no need of a pivot thing to turn the piece around since it's handheld and know everysingle second where exatly he is from the part your scanning.This advantage mean you can scan objects of unlimited size,insides of stuff,even human body and they are doing this already to make replacement limbs,so I think this is outdated and has been quite beaten up by people here.

and for info,your part isn't complicated,I could easily machine it to a ten of a thousand inch and make it shine like a mirror while 3D printer got tollerance approaching a thousand of an inch.

enjoy

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I would guess that most people who watch Jay Leno's Garage aren't the typical techie that already knows about this. Also, Leno is actually using the machines, not just demoing them.

And while you may be able to machine this to .0001 inch tolerance, how long would it take? This setup can scan it, print a test piece, then make the real piece (although the 3D printer may have a .001 inch tolerance, the scanner and the cnc machine are what really matters, the 3D printer is just printing a test piece in this case). Then the real piece can be tested, and many more can be produced. If you're only making one, and you know you can do it right the first time, making it yourself may be faster, but if you need more than one, or might not make it just right the first time, then this process is much more foolproof. Also, if the part is a bad design and keeps breaking (like every 10000 miles, so not too often, but often enough that you need a decent supply) it is much easier to just have the CNC machine make another one when it breaks again.

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Jay mentioned that you could make a casting pattern using this machine which is a pretty cool thing to do. However, you would need to scale up the model in the computer to make the pattern larger than the origional. This is because the cast metal shrinks as it's cooled.

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One might be thoroughly amazed that a machine can copy a 3 d verson of something comprised of moving parts such as an automobile transmission, but if what you want is a resulting product made from something other than this 'printable plastic', then you'll still need to build cast moulds, etc. to build it. I wonder if other types of plastic can be used to mould, say delrin or nylon?

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isn't http://www.shapeways.com/ using this technology?

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There are a number of projects and even commersial machines that can output metal objects from 3D drawings.
This is a some Swedish projects:

http://www.arcam.com/ (uses electron beams and metal powder like a plastic printer)

RMS - Robotised Laser Metal-wire Deposition
http://www.ptc.hv.se/extra/pod/?id=1067&module_instance=1&action=pod_show (uses fiber coupled lasers melting metal wire)

Cool to see all the innovation in this field!

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