3D Printing

I've never had the chance to use a 3D printer, but if I did, I would print some new molding clips for my car that are unobtanium.  It's currently all held on by enough clips, but the molding is missing about 5 clips total.  I have saved a few undamaged reference parts just in case I ever get the chance.

The chance to print off parts for use on older things is a Godsend for anyone trying to restore anything that needs plastic parts that are made of unobtanium.

3D printing is the future! Besides makers and hacker having fun with it, it's already affecting the medical field, as well as the food and fashion industries. These are big things.

Personally, I'm a big fan, and I've got a RepRap Prusa (and will probably build another model at some point) that I use for making parts for other things, like art robots, camera accessrories, and of course toys, logos, weapons, etc.

I'm also involved in Milwaukee Makerspace and we just started a 3D Printing Meetup for the Milwaukee area which gives people interested in this stuff a place to gather and talk about (and work on) printers.

And Ben, we met at 3D Printing Camp at Sector67... thanks for coming, btw!

I would love to use a 3d printer, but I cannot afford to buy or build one and go to school. If I had one I would us it a lot.

Maybe a local hackerspace has one you could check out.

I don't think there are any hackerspaces in south-east Kansas.

If you've not already seen, then checkout hackerspaces.org:

http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

Also, there are services which will ship to you:

http://i.materialise.com/

http://www.shapeways.com/

http://www.ponoko.com/3d-printing

Those services look nice, but in the long run I think it is more worth my while to save my pennies and buy one in a year or two.

The Printrbot, which was the very successful 3D printer from Kickstarter, is both affordable and good quality. I've seen people print working KEYS with them.

So DIY is possible in the 500-600 range. Really what's most expensive are the electronics and motors.

-Ben

How about a Pizza Printer? Add 4 cartridges, one full of cooked flour, one with tomato paste, one with vegetable/meat paste and the last one with cheese. With some development this will soon hit the market and be common as microwave ovens! Thought of this after seeing an exhibition of 3D printing by sudents at UCL, London.

OI would like to do DIY. Do you plan on releasing a parts list and plans for your folding model? I like it a lot more than others I've seen.