Have I seen the future???

[dickm]

Picked up the current Aldi catalogue yesterday; their "online offers" include a 3d printer for under £300, supposedly capable of producing work up to 150mm cube. Will anyone want to work wood in 5 years time?

 

[transatlantic]

As soon as they can make it reasonably quick and cheap, then it's going to be a big game changer.

 

[MikeG.]

....... Will anyone want to work wood in 5 years time?

Depends on whether people want stuff made out of plastic, or wood.

 

[nabs]

the 3d wood printer has already been invented!

 

[MattRoberts]

These things will be amazing when they're more main stream - printing your own replacement parts or custom fittings etc. It's definitely on my agenda to get one.

I doubt they will replace wood for furniture though, not for a long time!

 

[skipdiver]

A step closer to robots taking over the world. :shock:

 

[Mark A]

3D printed guns available to all...

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=3d+pr ... 60&bih=512

 

[Sheffield Tony]

the 3d wood printer has already been invented!

If you believe the marketing department. From the small print of what I saw, it is plastic with sawdust in it. Which makes another near impossible to recycle material we could do without.

 

[thetyreman]

when we can 3d print a 3d printer, what happens then? where can you go from there?

 

[nabs]

you probably won't be surprised to hear the boffins are working on that too. Once the technology matures it will have huge impacts - initially on manufacturing and supply chains (and thus employment) and then potentially on health care (organ replacements being the most likely candidate to come first)

 

[bourbon]

I understand the US navy is investigating metal 3d printing so they don't have to carry vast amounts of spares on their ships. Star trek replicater springs to mind

 

[Tasky]

Will anyone want to work wood in 5 years time?

Hopefully 3D printing will see all the veneered chipboard places either go out of business or transfer over to plastic, leaving the vast majority of wood in proper, solid original format. From there, most woodwork will be in proper wood and MDF will be forgotten!

I understand the US navy is investigating metal 3d printing so they don't have to carry vast amounts of spares on their ships.

The metal with which to print them, assuming they have to carry X number of each as per SOPs, will still take up space and weight, though... and how long does it take to print that 'emergency' flange bolt set?

 

[DBT85]

Metal printing already exists and is used. Ferrari for example 3D printed their steel alloy pistons for this years F1 car, rather than using aluminium. Being able to print in steel meant they could use honeycomb designs not possible with casting/cnc and so could retain the strength of the steel with none of the flex of aluminium.

3D printing is going to be massive in the years ahead.

 

[NazNomad]

3D printing is great because they nearly always want to share the drawings with everyone... Which means you can make those things from wood.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

This company do a variety of "additive manufacturing" aka 3D printing techniques

https://www.protolabs.co.uk/

They have a nice little PDF about what can be made in plastic & metals here.

 

[Gerry]

That isn't a very well spec'd printer from Aldi. You can get one with a 275x215x210 build area for much less nowadays.
The main issue is the steep learning curve, they are far from plug and play unless you invest thousands in proprietary units and consumables.

Gerry

 

[MattRoberts]

I've just realised the next thing that's going to crop up - veneered plastic board

"Lovely bit of American black walnut veneered over that polyflipyflop substrate..."

 

[dickm]

Actually went to a talk about these things a couple of months ago. According to that, Rolls-Royce use 3D metal printing to create honeycomb cowlings for current jet engines. Saves 30% on weight. There's also a place called ?make? in Aberdeen that provides access to quite advanced printers, among other high tech stuff.

 

[Geordie Joe]

when we can 3d print a 3d printer, what happens then? where can you go from there?

You already can, well 80% of one anyway, there are a few metal parts you have to buy. There is a specific make/model that was designed just for this, prusa or reprap I think. The idea is you buy a printer and print all the parts so your mates can get one for just the price of the print head and a few nuts and bolts. You can go on web sites, get the files needed to print another printer and off you go.

 

[worn thumbs]

All of which seems to point to the situation where the fellow who can do the 3D modelling is the key to the process.A lot more challenging and interesting than being the bloke who can only press the "print" button.