With Nasa's wrench, Lathes and other tools being designed to be printed on even a consumer printer, The idea that 3D printers are nothing more than a toy for printing phone cases and statues is starting to become a moot point though many including logan fail to see beyond the general use of these devices.
I am thinking, what are some more items that could be printed on a 3D printer? The best way to incurrage new interest in a technology is to give it more than the cool factor. To tell people, they need this and the only way of doing this is to design and print new, practical objects or demonstrate the potential of a printer.
So what are some ideas you guys have? Dosent matter how complex or simple it might be, Just looking for some ideas to help increase interest in 3D printing. For example, I am currently in talks with a group of rotary enthusiests in producing dummy parts for rotary engines for rebuilds. It could be a mouse that has adjustable sides to make the perfect mouse for a user. Anything.
Costum fit in ear headphones. You would need a 3d scanner for that though. You can get stuff like that already, but it requires making a mould etc and costs 4 figures.
A scalable pc case:
Only need a place for your ssd?-->remove the front part
have a micro atx board?--> you can save some space.
Want 140mm fans?-->just make the side 2 cm wider.
What would be extremely practical in my opinion would the ability to quickly print any kind of metal screw and similar parts.
If you could have a small and accurate metal printer+3d scanner combo with a database of parts for like 500$ 3d printers would start to make sense for a lot of businesses and hobbyist. Unfortunately thats not gonna happen anytime soon.
5 years ago, printer were $20,000+ Now you can get one for $300. Working with metal however is going to take a lot longer to come to consumers. We done have any real viable powder printer and not to mention due to stupid laser laws, I cant get a laser powerful enough to melt metal for a home made laser metal printer.
I was thinking more viable today. 20x20x20cm build plates, FDM. Something we could print today.
My friend printed a stashbox/grinder combo for his weed. And he printed me a replacement keycap for my keyboard.
You could make money clips, replacement parts for small electronics and household items that you would otherwise have to buy an entire new product to replace the broken one (nobody sells parts for coffee machines and dumb shit like that).
From an objective person that watches tech develop at as rapid a pace as it does....
Do you think metal printers are a viable threat in the next say... 10 years... to a business that does custom onesy-twosy metalwork for clients? Having seen how rapidly 3D printing at a consumer POV has developed... I think it's really an impending doom on such companies... as it can, and WILL happen eventually... it's a matter of time and cost reduction...
What would be your gage on how long it will be until an accurate within a thousandth metal printer is on the market below a $3000 range?
Before it gets to the $3k range it'll get to the $20k range, and there is a business opportunity there. I figure some company, like ikea, will let you log on, print and go pick up. Probably some sort of uberfancy printer that can print in sawdust/glue/particleboard, metal and paint all at once.
Onesey twosey will still be a thing -- if anything your local neighbourhood replimat might become a thing.
If you have experience with 3d-modeling in i.e autocad, you can try your luck in printing parts for your broken i.e household appliances? It will save you the $674785678 to get them repaired or having to buy a new whatever-it-is-that-is-broken.
Im fortunate enough to not have anything break yet so i haven't had the chance to try and repair anything using my printer. (which is so fucking typical because if i didn't have a 3d-printer then everything will start fucking breaking like it always does)
I know its already been mentioned in this thread, but I think 3D building your own custom computer case would be extremely cool.
You want the smallest possible computer case to fit your computer hardware? Design one and then print it.
Do you want a huge computer case which you can fit basically anything you think of inside? Design one and then print it.
Do you want a completely custom/unique computer case to show off which could be a great conversation starter and be extremely cool to show off? You can design and print that too!
If I owned a 3D printer and had plenty of time to design it, I'd design the smallest atx computer case which would fit all the components I need, give it some really nice paint job, heck, maybe even install a clear side panel to make it even cooler, and bring it to lan parties to show off.
Another thing I'd love to do is attempt to design and build myself my own little toy airplane which could fly left to right, up and down. Yes, this one would be much harder to because of aerodynamics and the weight limit and whatever else, but I think it would be incredibly cool to do and a great learning experience.
There are so many more things I could think of, but I won't say because my post is getting a bit long, but the possibilities are basically endless!
A 3d-printer is also imo a must have for the robot hobbyists.
I have always been interested in robotics and i have done quite a bit of reading & research into the subject of robotics... but i have never pursued it on a practical level because making the parts would be a pain in the ass. A 3d printer would make prototyping a lot less troublesome.
Can you imagine making all the individual parts required for an i.e hexapod all by hand...? That would be fucking torture; on the other hand... with a 3d-printer & a little bit of CAD-know-how (or an already made model online), it can be super easy.
Because now i have a 3d printer, i know im going to try my hand in some practical robotics dabbling.
I have printed the following items. Feel free to let me know if you think these are just toys for printing semi useless crap.
ADA Compliant threashold for my house doors.
Usable prosthetic fingers for people who have lost digits.
A new AFO to replace the broken one the VA hasn't bothered to replace in 2 years.
Switch housing for my wheelchair powered seating, lights and seat heater switches.
Wall spacers so a peg board can be mounted on a wall and look nearly flush with all peg holes being usable with through hole hooks.
All the custom mounting hardware I needed to put my custom designed hand controls in my truck.
Replacement knobs from multiple appliances.
Stereo component brackets for stacking things that don't stack like a PS3.
I now have a printer that will let me print full size AFOs for people with disablities for under $100 for a finished product, instead of the some result from a specialist for $3,500 per foot.
I'm sure as time goes by I will continue finding many more useful things that I can print cheaper than I can buy replacement parts for.
Would it be any way feasablr price and material wise to print cherry MX keycaps?
Probably going to be a shape ways deal. What do they print in? Would it come in on or around $60 for a full set in coloured plastic? I wonder what the fit is like. I have seen some on the store thing by some users but cannot find much about the quality.
I love the concept of drones. Although I can't afford a 3D printer I can afford a raspberry pi and have been playing around by hooking together motors, battery packs, and wifi on a light frame (at the moment it is made out of very thin wood and string but kinda broke so I scraped the frame and kept the bits until I come up with a new body).
Long term I would very much like to butcher and hook up a Xbox Kinect type camera sensor to give it some sense of its environments, relay that back to a sever for processing and create a virtual environment with small gyros so it can tell where it is. Perhaps have multiple drones to survey an area faster. Its all very out there but as an electronics engineering student I have all the faculties to make it somewhat possible and will ask my lecturer when I get some spare time to see if I can use the 3D printer.
I'd also like to make a small unmanned drone (military like) using a 3D jet engine. The biggest issue I have at the moment is that they get extremely hot and plastic melts. I've been chatting with a few chemical engineers about seeing if its possible to make a plastic ceramic composite that allows for extremely light weight but maintains heat resistance.
The issue with this is that the substance needs to be heated to melt and then be shaped. This may be overcome by having a reaction occur at the nozzle. A plastic that reacts with a ceramic at a certain heat. By having the ceramic suspended in the plastic but not yet reacted you could have it on a 3D printer coil, malleable and usable. Then perhaps coated with another substance (like that spray at maker faire that Logan showed off which allowed for 3D printed things to undergo electrolysis and be coated in metal) which increases strength and again heat resistance while maintaining weight.
Its all very out there but thats kinda what I see myself doing if I had a 3D printer, I couldn't justify myself having one otherwise. I've had a very many other ideas but I've had a long day and don't really feel like typing them out, I bet other people don't want to hear my crazed ramblings either.
I'm a civil engineering student in Aus with free access to 3D printers, a laser cutter, and a cnc router and I ended up making an fpv quadcopter with a 3D printed ABS body. We have a Markforged Mark Two and can print carbon fibre but bloody hell that stuff is expensive and I would feel bad just using it on personal projects.
The idea of using a camera to make the drone have depth perception sounds pretty interesting though. If the surveying you were talking about required depth perception, as in topographical surveying, would using two cheap cameras on gimbals, maybe with servo motors, be viable? I'm thinking you could use the parallax between the two sensors to calculate the distance maybe...
The government will start regulating them heavily as soon as the price becomes affordable to the mass consumer market. When the Cody Wilson/Defense Distributed open source 3-D printed gun goes to metal sintering/printing, then you can bet the government is going to say; "Hey wait a minute. It was okay when your plastic guns were going to blow up in your face after 5 rounds, but actual metal guns are a different story."
