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How things can and should and will be done. Lo and behold, commercial ventures can still make money.
This is nothing short of amazing but as a result of watching too many sci-fi films, what's to prevent a person, say 50 years from now, "printing" his own cyborg and programming it for total death and destruction of the human race.
If someone could do that, they could do it without the printer.
This is a science fiction to science fact idea, and I've been fascinated with it for a while now. While many manufacturers may need to adapt, there will be many new opportunities that arise. First on my mind is the amount of consumables that will be needed, both in variety and quality of materials.
From what I've gathered the quality of it is pretty spotty too.
But you'd better be sitting down before you check to see what the ink costs that prints transistors. I'm not kidding either about any of this. Those printers have been around for a number of years now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_electronics
RepRaps are a prime example of why academics should keep their noses in books, and out of workshops. Not the swiftest mechanical contraptions I've ever seen, not by a long shot. The last stepper motor driver design I saw of their was pretty pathetic too. Oh well ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_electronics
RepRaps are a prime example of why academics should keep their noses in books, and out of workshops. Not the swiftest mechanical contraptions I've ever seen, not by a long shot. The last stepper motor driver design I saw of their was pretty pathetic too. Oh well ...
It only takes 3 out of 100 ideas to be good.
Remember the old HP InkJets? They were crap, too. Now compare that to a photo printed on good paper. Looks nearly as good as anything Kodak could do.
Maybe the estimations for timeframe are a bit of a stretch, as I think in 10 years, this will just then be a reasonable replacement for small-scale plastic objects that are typically manufactured with vacuum or injection molding. But think of how many of those things are in your life now. Do you even realize how many times you need a little thingy to connect this to that, or hold one of these, etc... I've spent hours and hours searching for something that I could have easily made had the tools been available to do so. Well, now they are. Or at least they're getting there.
It has to start somewhere.
Remember the old HP InkJets? They were crap, too. Now compare that to a photo printed on good paper. Looks nearly as good as anything Kodak could do.
Maybe the estimations for timeframe are a bit of a stretch, as I think in 10 years, this will just then be a reasonable replacement for small-scale plastic objects that are typically manufactured with vacuum or injection molding. But think of how many of those things are in your life now. Do you even realize how many times you need a little thingy to connect this to that, or hold one of these, etc... I've spent hours and hours searching for something that I could have easily made had the tools been available to do so. Well, now they are. Or at least they're getting there.
It has to start somewhere.
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