News - Study suggests home 3D printing could save people up to $2k p.a.

[m9a8t7t6]

While 3d printers are great for prototyping (I've used them several times for this), I can't see it ever being cheaper to print out household items. Injection moulding etc. is just so much faster and cheaper, they will always be able to cover the distribution costs and still undercut a printed alternative.

[NecronomicoN]

I can't think of a use for these printers that I wouldn't rather employ a milling machine for. I am also one of those people with a severe aversion to plastic anything. When these printers can use aluminium or lightweight alloys, let's talk.

I foresee a whole new era of copyright infringement lawsuits. Crossy mentioned "Scanning Shops". Hope they've got legal teams.

[crossy]

Not sure if we saw the same demo (Click! IIRC). The one I saw certainly had a model with different colour bits, but it looked like 3 or 4 different plastics had been used, rather than a 'blend'. I mean, imagine a four-colour inkjet printer, but each section could be printed in yellow, cyan, magenta or black and ONLY those colours. You couldn't mix a pixel blend to produce green, or blue, or purplish-red. The demo I saw appeared to be of the level of 4 input plastics gives four possible colours, not millions of them. And that would still be highly limiting.

Agree with what you're saying. What I'm getting at - but not explaining well enough - is that rather than get the colour purely from the substrate, treat the structural material as mere background and allow your 3D printer to also paint the material as it's being laid down. And I'm guessing (because I don't know enough about the physics) that you'd be able to colour mix.

I can't think of a use for these printers that I wouldn't rather employ a milling machine for. I am also one of those people with a severe aversion to plastic anything. When these printers can use aluminium or lightweight alloys, let's talk.

Hmm, agree with what you're saying. But I guess what you're asking for is something that's a fusion of these 3D printers with industrial sintering machines. Doesn't strike me as something that's going to be doable in a domestic setting, plus deposition speeds are going to suck (I guess).

I foresee a whole new era of copyright infringement lawsuits. Crossy mentioned "Scanning Shops". Hope they've got legal teams.

Get customers to sign a disclaimer that the object they're printing isn't subject to copyright protection.

[Yash047]

Anyone of you thought that you can also print a pistol with it.

[Saracen]

Agree with what you're saying. What I'm getting at - but not explaining well enough - is that rather than get the colour purely from the substrate, treat the structural material as mere background and allow your 3D printer to also paint the material as it's being laid down. And I'm guessing (because I don't know enough about the physics) that you'd be able to colour mix.

...

It's the "mixing" bit that I suspect would be tricky. Don't forget that colour printers don't actual mux colour. They just lay down ever so tiny dots of the colours of the actual ink in a raster pattern that fools the eye into thinking it sees colours it actually doesn't. About 90% of the effect is achieved by conning the human brain into seeing something that isn't actually there.

Maybe it's just a failure of my imagination, but I struggle to see how that's possible with 3D printers, at least using anything like current generations.

I mean, I know how thermal and PE inkjets do it, and getting the photo-realistic prints we all take for granted these days took years (15?) of research, refinement and a couple of mountains of money, but we ended up with tiny dots, clever ink and even cleverer driver maths, and it still works by fooling the eye.

I can also see how a 3D object can be printed, layer by layer, into a single colour object, or even have sections of varying but still single colours. But I struggle with the engineering involved in printing "dots" in 3D small enough for a rasteriser to fool the eye, but coherent enough to hold up in a 3D object, using anything like the devices I've seen yet.

Having said that, I remember using the first colour inkjet (HP Deskjet 500C) when it came out, and impressive as hell as it was at the time, it's monumentally basic by the standards of a modern machine costing about a tenth of what that £750 machine did, back then.

I guess what I'm saying is that I can't see full-colour 3D YET, but in two, five maybe ten years, who knows?

[Saracen]

Anyone of you thought that you can also print a pistol with it.

Wouldn't be hard, I'd imagine.

Printing one that is good for actually firing bullets, and not blowing up in your hand? Trickier. A lot trickier.

[Funkstar]

I mean, I know how thermal and PE inkjets do it, and getting the photo-realistic prints we all take for granted these days took years (15?) of research, refinement and a couple of mountains of money, but we ended up with tiny dots, clever ink and even cleverer driver maths, and it still works by fooling the eye.

Research done, money spent, knowledge gained that I'm sure will still apply to a 3D shape. Of course we aren't there yet, but I can see us getting there a lot faster than we did with 2D printing.

[Saracen]

Research done, money spent, knowledge gained that I'm sure will still apply to a 3D shape. Of course we aren't there yet, but I can see us getting there a lot faster than we did with 2D printing.

Some, maybe, some I very much doubt. For instance, a lot of the money has gone into head development, and into quality control systems and robotics and the cartridge assembly plants. And given that the technology is so vastly different, I struggle to see much overlap.

But as for it happening a lot faster, oh yes, I'd think so. Back in the days when colour inkjets were first developing, home PCs were still very much the exception, not the rule, and as for the internet ....

Now, of course, it's a very much mature market, and much MUCH larger. I'd be stunned if things didn't move a lot faster.

[crossy]

It's the "mixing" bit that I suspect would be tricky. Don't forget that colour printers don't actual mux colour. They just lay down ever so tiny dots of the colours of the actual ink in a raster pattern that fools the eye into thinking it sees colours it actually doesn't. About 90% of the effect is achieved by conning the human brain into seeing something that isn't actually there.

I remember seeing a paper from Epson on dye-based pigment mixing that looked quite promising, plus I guess there's always dye-sub type technology to fall back on. Although it's waaaayyyy out of my comfort zone I can't help thinking that this would be a far, far easier approach than what's been proposed recently with multiple spools of materials of different colours. Irrespective of whether those colour changes are done manually (like the £700 Maplin device) or automatically (like a knitting machine).

Having said that, I remember using the first colour inkjet (HP Deskjet 500C) when it came out, and impressive as hell as it was at the time, it's monumentally basic by the standards of a modern machine costing about a tenth of what that £750 machine did, back then. I guess what I'm saying is that I can't see full-colour 3D YET, but in two, five maybe ten years, who knows?

I'm with you 100% on this, and if I had to figure out a timeframe then I'd guess that we'll see an HP SculptJet 500C in PC World in about 10 years time. Although even with employee discount I hate to think what kind of cost the consumables would be.

What I'm waiting for though is for some smart-donkey ( ) to come along and say that 3D printing is a dead end and we need to get virtual - i.e. the object equivalent of the paperless office, (cue hysterical laughter)

Anyone of you thought that you can also print a pistol with it.

Erm yes, but (a) that would be completely illegal, (b) it'd likely be single shot and (c) there's a high probability that it'd blow your effin' hand off.

Far better to print the components for a crossbow, or nip down to B&Q and get the makings for a pipebomb, although even in those circumstances don't be surprised if you get a midnight visit from the police ... and don't expect any sympathy from me you wannabe terrorist/bank-robber!

[NecronomicoN]

Get customers to sign a disclaimer that the object they're printing isn't subject to copyright protection.

A User Agreement is not legal protection. Like "torrent" sites, they would still facilitate copyright violations. The obligation of resolving rights ownership falls upon the shop.

[Funkstar]

A User Agreement is not legal protection. Like "torrent" sites, they would still facilitate copyright violations. The obligation of resolving rights ownership falls upon the shop.

The stakes are higher, but how is a store offering 3D printed objects any more liable than one with a photo copier?

[crossy]

A User Agreement is not legal protection. Like "torrent" sites, they would still facilitate copyright violations. The obligation of resolving rights ownership falls upon the shop.

The stakes are higher, but how is a store offering 3D printed objects any more liable than one with a photo copier?

That was my understanding too - that the copy shops were using the customer agreements to shift fault onto the customer. Something about the shops having to show that they'd taken "reasonable steps" to ensure that copyright wasn't violated.

Of course isn't there the American system - shop gets sued for non-malicious copyright violation, pays up and then civil sues the customer. I'm also sure there was some comment a couple of years ago about some US chain of copy shops that made customers sign a contract that stated the customer accepted financial liability for all/any legal penalities incurred directly by their request.

[NecronomicoN]

The stakes are higher, but how is a store offering 3D printed objects any more liable than one with a photo copier?

I lack sufficient knowledge of paper print laws to really answer that with any certainty. Paper printing is a huge industry and I'm only aware of one case, involving Kinko's. However, three are listed on this page:
http://www.copyright.com/Services/co...decisions.html

The second one doesn't fit in this context, but the other two do. Seems to indicate that where money is involved, the printer holds liability.