wow just think of what you could do with this

http://youtu.be/ZboxMsSz5Aw

WOW !!!!!

The fine folks out west have had one of these for years. They didn't have the deluxe model so it didn't print the reverse feature.

The man out west has had one for years, It makes stealing designs much easier.

Beat me to it Kibb

I can understand the cloneing process. But, how in the fuk. Does it figure out gear ratio s and stuff for a cresent wrench?

a guy i work with was doing an SIT in/around houston for a client at well dynamics and they actually had one at their facility, he said that it is pretty amazing to see in person, it took about a whole work day to make a standard 8" c-clamp.

Thats awsome -- Wonder if it can print a usable prop lol

that is pretty bad *ss, at our office we have access to a 3-D side scan surveying laser that we use at plants that will duplicate every nut,bolt, pipe, clamp and fittings on these units out there. It can pick up the size of the bolt, and the pitch of the threads. It is a pretty neat thing to see.

3-D printers have been out for a while now. They are pretty helpful with R&D. I know the University of Arkansas has had one in their Mechanical Engineering department for at least 8 years now. I don't think the model they had would create movable pieces straight out of the printer, but you could fab anything you wanted. The one I saw didn't use the powders and binders; it used heated plastic of some kind. It had a robotic arm that would extrude the heated plastic in a very, very small stream and build the copy up layer by layer. Kind of like how they recreated that girl in that Fifth Element movie. Excuse the bad youtube video, but you get the point.


WARNING: video NSFW after about 1 minute

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4ruQK8EQ8U[/youtube]