this is amazing Options

[mrbubblehead]

what will this do to the classic car world?

http://www.break.com/index/why-3d-printing...ick-ass-2421396

[Mikey914]

Dr Evil is waiting until they have a body sized printer to print himself a new girlfriend, or better yet twins!

Yes the technology is there, but it's not as user friendly as you would like. It's easier to make silicone molds and use catalyzed rubber, or to extrude using conventional methods. The materials cost for the parts is not cost effective for production. You can make rain funnels for maybe $15 a pop. You have a $3000 printer, so if you hapen to have the equipment and only need a set for you great, but for a business model, those are at least $20 rain funnels. Injection molding has a large up front cost say $2000, but the unit cost may be $1 a pop.
Sell 1000 pcs at $6 for a $3000 profit may take 2 years+
or print them at say best case $10 each and sell at $12.50 each. say you do sell 500 pcs you can make $1250, but your overhead is the materials and printer.

So, if you don't have to pay for a printer you could make money making these, if you don't count your time in. Also there are issues with storage of the powder or gel.


Not my business model, but if you want to pay over 2x the price, I'll take it.

These do have a place, but they are not there yet. When the replicator from Star Trek comes on line, sign me up.

[Katmanken]

Not my business model, but if you want to pay over 2x the price, I'll take it.

These do have a place, but they are not there yet. When the replicator from Star Trek comes on line, sign me up.

Mikey, there are other tricks that you can do with SLA. I've actually seen it used to make molds for stainless steel cast parts. We designed the parts on CAD so that each part had a casting runner extending from it that would plug into a central sprue. We downloaded the models to the SLA tank, and made a bunch of the parts/risers, and one central sprue.

When the SLA pieces were done, we assembled them into a "tree" where the sprue was the "trunk" and the risers on the parts acted as "branches" that plugged into holes within the sprue/trunk. So we ended up with a "tree "with a cloud of parts surrounding the central sprue.

We sent that out to our caster, where it was dipped in casting plaster, and surrounded by foundry sand to make a mold. And when metal was poured into the SLA sprue, the plastics burned away creating a passage for the molten metal. The molten metal burned it's way down the sprue, down the risers, and into the part cavitys and formed the parts. We sent out a SLA "tree", got back a staineless steel "tree" and we simply cut the parts off. Some people use the SLA parts to make silicone molds and then cast wax in the silicone momds for the "lost wax" process. See pic below of an "after casting" "tree".

I've also used SLA to make a quick and dirty mold that could be used to make a small quantity of injection molded parts. We simply made the SLA mold to fit within our plastics press, and squirted plastics into the cavity of the SLA mold. Didn't last long, but it was quick, dirty and cheap, and lasted long enough to make the parts we needed. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)