Tuesday 11 January 2011

The First Time I Saw One Of These,

it was in a Jurassic Park movie, the shape of a Velociraptor inner sound chamber was made as if by magic by putting in a 3D image of it into a machine and a plastic model was made, a neat bit of kit, but now you can have one too, for just $1,225.00, it is called a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, it is a 3D printer, the difference being you can make 3D models, after scanning the object to be made hot plastic is built up later on layer until the object is ready to be used, almost any broken part can be made, handy if you are waiting weeks for replacement part on almost anything plastic made, even complete chess sets are possible, the system revolves around an extruder that is extremely reliable, and very simple to maintain, the hot end on this extruder is essentially unbreakable and the filament drive system is one of the strongest on the market, so the blurb says, just one thing it comes as a kit, so a bit of DIY is needed, but do I really need one?

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