Makerbots
- Thread starter Necronic
- Start date
I've been watching them progress, following the development and refinement of them over the last few years. I finally ordered an extruder (via a kickstarter project) so I might actually get around to building one for myself.
If I had lots of disposable income, I'd just buy a maker bot or an ultimaker.
I'd still say they require a good bit of babysitting and a willingness to tinker. You can expect with some of these kits to be able to plug and go, but eventually you'll find some difficulty with the software or hardware that will require some online research and tinkering.
As long as you know what you're getting into and you want to print very cool 3D objects, I'd say jump on in!
Obligatory 3D printing video for those who have no idea what's being discussed here. Note that the video is sped up, the printers are not nearly this fast! Watch until the end to see the final object, some of the parts are there for support and break off at the end:
If I had lots of disposable income, I'd just buy a maker bot or an ultimaker.
I'd still say they require a good bit of babysitting and a willingness to tinker. You can expect with some of these kits to be able to plug and go, but eventually you'll find some difficulty with the software or hardware that will require some online research and tinkering.
As long as you know what you're getting into and you want to print very cool 3D objects, I'd say jump on in!
Obligatory 3D printing video for those who have no idea what's being discussed here. Note that the video is sped up, the printers are not nearly this fast! Watch until the end to see the final object, some of the parts are there for support and break off at the end:
GasBandit
Staff member
If you're willing to drop a few kilobucks, it is now possible to pirate solid objects. What a wonderful time we live in.
Gonna print yourself up an assault rifle, Necronic?
Gonna print yourself up an assault rifle, Necronic?
Necronic
Staff member
.....actually that's the article that got me interested in it again. No joke. I've known about Makerbots for a couple of years, but they seemed a little jankity for a while. New model looks better (it has a toy robot in it.)
GasBandit
Staff member
Yeah, now I'm interested too, especially seeing how comparatively affordable they're getting. I was also unaware of the legal semantics involving what constitutes a gun (of which another article linked in that article informed me) - the lower receiver assembly. Everything else is just a "part" you can buy without a license or background check or anything. Interesting given that the UPPER receiver assembly is the only part you need to be metal as it's the part that has the firing chamber. The lower receiver assembly is perfectly fine made (or printed as the case may be) from plastic - and no serial number, no license, no background check. Wait'll the ATF gets a load of this. I expect new legislation soon that will designate the upper receiver assembly as the part that makes the gun.
Necronic
Staff member
Honestly that part SHOULD be the part that's considered the gun anyways. It's got the damn bolt ffs.
Guns don't kill people, random legally not-looked-at parts kill people!
You can do wholesale art theft too. Take 20-30 pictures of a sculpture, push them through http://www.123dapp.com/catch for free and you'll receive a printable 3D file back so you can have your own mini david or armless woman by the fountain.
The place I'm seriously looking at now is seemecnc.com which isn't as nice as the ultimaker or the replicator, but at a fraction of the cost I'm happy to put up with the small issues. I saw them in person in two different maker faires and they are good machines, just not quite as fast and not quite as good looking. If they brought some to the faire today I would be assembling one now...
More importantly I got my wife's approval for the purchase, she actually sees some utility in having that sort of toy around.
The place I'm seriously looking at now is seemecnc.com which isn't as nice as the ultimaker or the replicator, but at a fraction of the cost I'm happy to put up with the small issues. I saw them in person in two different maker faires and they are good machines, just not quite as fast and not quite as good looking. If they brought some to the faire today I would be assembling one now...
More importantly I got my wife's approval for the purchase, she actually sees some utility in having that sort of toy around.
You could sell a series of homemade sex toys modeled after your own 'toy'!
Not if it can only make things out of resin.
let me know when they can replicate "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"
S
Soliloquy
My main question is how much do the printer cartridges cost?
GasBandit
Staff member
I haven't seen, but one might could extrapolate from the gun parts in the article are said to have a combined cost of between 10 and 30 dollars in resin.
The material comes as plastic filament. Like very thick plastic fishing line, wound up on spools.
Expensive filament is around $50 per kilogram, cheap around $20 per kilo. If you were to print a solid block it would be about a four inch cube. Most objects are printed about 70 to 80 percent hollow with a thin shell for the outside, so a typical print would cost less than a few dollars for a largish object. Small objects are under a dollar.
The price is going to go down as demand goes up, and there are people working on cheap extruders so you can make your own filament from plastic pellets, and some working on making the print head accept pellets directly.
Expensive filament is around $50 per kilogram, cheap around $20 per kilo. If you were to print a solid block it would be about a four inch cube. Most objects are printed about 70 to 80 percent hollow with a thin shell for the outside, so a typical print would cost less than a few dollars for a largish object. Small objects are under a dollar.
The price is going to go down as demand goes up, and there are people working on cheap extruders so you can make your own filament from plastic pellets, and some working on making the print head accept pellets directly.
While the website sells plastic pellets, the machine only accepts filament. I've seen it in person twice. I'm not sure why they're selling pellets, perhaps they're playing with a pellet extruders in the back ground?
The machine is definitely filament consuming, though.
If you do get a makerbot make sure you take lots of pictures of your creations. I'm really tempted to pick one up too... the quality of printing has increased dramatically in the last few years and the price while still expensive is finally getting more reasonable for what it can do.
I pulled the trigger on the cheap seemecnc kit. Hopefully I'll get it in a week or two, and hopefully it won't take long to build, tweak, and get good results. I would have loved a maker bot replicator, but at three times the cost I can't justify it.
So. Anybody going to make a 3D file of the dur face? Who are our blender experts here?
So. Anybody going to make a 3D file of the dur face? Who are our blender experts here?
How much of a Makerbot could you make with a Makerbot?
Mr. Wasabi and I were just watching this and discussing how we would never have to repair another toy again if we had one of these printers. Also - homemade Lego sets!
In theory, most of it. You'd have to get the rails, slides, tubes, electronics, screws, and a few other diddly bits, but the majority of the structure could be printed.
I don't have a desire to see my minecraft worlds rendered in plastic, especially not before they figure out how to make a print head that mixes colors for seamless full color printing. This is currently in development, by the way. The head will mix cyan, magenta, yellow,and black plastic filament during printing.
I am, however, very excited about capturing real world 3d objects using photographs, and printing them. I have some hand casts of my children from several years ago and I'd like to duplicate them and send them to grandparents as gifts.
It would be fun to print a scale model of buildings, sculptures, or mundane objects such as street signs, then let the kids play with them. What kid wouldn't want a scale copy of the university of Michigan stadium in their car play set?
It's ABS, so it holds paint as well as any other plastic. You buy paint specifically for plastic, or you buy plastic primer then use any paint.
I've seen examples of people using them for DnD characters or campaign elements, and all the normal model painting rules apply to them.
Necronic
Staff member
Eh....not really. The only parts you could make with the makerbot would be the items that could be mass produced at 1% of the price you are paying for the resin and produced 1k per minute. And the stuff from the makerbot probably wouldn't meet the technical specs for any delicate part (although....maybe....I dunno)
Yes, really.
For those people that need a thousand of them, it might make sense to fabricate them using another process. Or even a few dozen of them.
But if you only need one or two, or you want to customize them, or you want to use the makerbot to make its own replacement parts, then of course it can make many of them itself. That was one of the major goals of the projects the makerbot derives from.
It's faster, however, to use a laser cutter and sheet material though.
Necronic
Staff member
It can't make metal parts can it? (dunno if you mean making a mold w/ the laser cutter/sheet metal comment). And I dunno how many of the significant (more than 2$) parts in that are low-spec plastic, or even use the PVA/ABS plastics that are the main components here.
You can't do any of the controllers. You can't do any of the metal parts. You can't do most of the casing (as it's larger than the makerbot). You can't do the extruder. Yes, you can do some of the gears, probably (depends on specs), but I dunno about the rest of it. There's probably a significant amount of the plastic parts that it can't do due to torque/temp/etc requirements and the lack of plasticizers/twin screw/other extrusion techniques.
I never said it could handle the metal parts. It can most certainly hand all the plastic parts, including those you might consider delicate, or require high strength. Of course it can handle those, because the machines are prototyped on themselves, then they use the designs to make molds. You can replace all the plastic parts by versions made by itself.
You can make the side panels and other large non metal structures, but you do have to break them up into smaller builds that integrate with each other.
Don't get me wrong, CNC plastic extrusion isn't perfect and isn't the end all be all for plastic manufacturing, like anything else it has its uses and there are some things that it doesn't work well for.
I further don't think they're ready for prime time, I would only encourage enthusiastic people willing to play with their machines a lot to consider one.
You can make the side panels and other large non metal structures, but you do have to break them up into smaller builds that integrate with each other.
Don't get me wrong, CNC plastic extrusion isn't perfect and isn't the end all be all for plastic manufacturing, like anything else it has its uses and there are some things that it doesn't work well for.
I further don't think they're ready for prime time, I would only encourage enthusiastic people willing to play with their machines a lot to consider one.