[Xelion]

I was reading the newspaper this morning and u know how they have a technology section... in some papers. This caught my attention ZCORPORATION. After reading the little caption I was astounded to know that a printer could literally print 3D Models, of course this all sounds uber cool but tech like this is soon becoming popular and useful for a variety of applications.

All types of technologies are GRADUALLY becoming prevalent but some you'll never read, see or hear of. Thats why I made this post its interesting to know what new devices are available on the market. So if you have something interesting to tell, do post

[Terawatt_99]

why does this make me think of tron...

[Nico]

3d printers ( for rapid prototyping ) are nothing really new

[Styxx]

Originally posted by Nico
3d printers ( for rapid prototyping ) are nothing really new

True, but that doesn't make them any less cool. I'd make me a full set of FS miniatures if I had one of those. For starters.

[Odyssey]

[color=cc9900]Hell, even my school has a 3D printer. Granted, it's only one of the types that tracks like an inkjet but with a cutting head that moves vertically instead of spraying ink, but still. They can't be that expensive, unless you get into the realm of those which do a full model instead of working on one face.[/color]

[J3Vr6]

Is that the printer you see in concept car labs?  Where they design the car in a computer and put some sort of block (of cheese?) under this railing thing and this pointy thing running on those rails shaves off the stuff til it looks like what they wanted to print?

[Stryke 9]

Yep.

Me, I've wanted one of those for so frickin' long... expecially one of the ones does metal, could build your own ****in' car for just the cost of materials and a few rubber hoses. Unfortunately, they stopped selling commercial-grade ones years ago, so the only ones you can get are a digit or two too much.

[Nico]

The ones I know use a laser and some sort of gel.

[Stryke 9]

Um, you mean thermoplastic prototypers? It's not a gel.  They come in a few different flavors- the most common ones do molded plastic, then come these plaster things you see people selling models from all the time, and then there are these freaky metal-molding ones that must cost an ungodly amount of money but are about the coolest thing ever created, short of some types of artillery.

[Bobboau]

maybe if we all pool together we can get one and re-coop the price by selling FS (includeing mods) minitures

[kasperl]

copyright, copyright.

aside from that, i still doubt you could sell enough to even break-even.

[Stryke 9]

'At's why you get the metal version. Who's gonna pay for a toy Trebuchet when I'll be selling the real deal?

Well, minus the microfusion warhead, probably just slap some RDX in there and let the stupid people sort it out.

[kasperl]

ok, metal models of FS ships, you've got me interested now.

i just don't want to know how much one of those modellers costs though.

[demon442]

Well, I was reading a magazine, popular science I believe, the other day with the same story(odd?).  They featured an upright model that shoots wax instead of ink and then uses a laser to harden it or something...

That model went for ~10k I believe, and that was the low-end type.  If we want a metal molding model, i'd say ~100k.

[Liberator]

I wonder how much detail you can get?

[demon442]

Quite a lot of detail if you are willing to greeble the model in CAD.  Of course, painting would still be an issue, as it would surely have to be done by hand for any kind of acuracy to the texture.