Can Parts Be Reproduced by "Printing" in 3-D?

[Old Moparz]

My wife sent me a link to a youtube video that looks pretty amazing. It's a process where an object is scanned, then printed in a three dimensional form using resins. It kept an incredible amount of detail where accuracy can be measured with a micrometer. While watching it, the first thing that entered my mind was reproducing plastic car parts with this method.

Just watch the 4+ minute video..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

They reproduced a functional crescent wrench that looked to be about 12" long in the video. With the same machine, I don't see why parts like a radio bezel, a headlight door, or other similar sized parts couldn't be done.

[charge69]

I have seen that video recently and wondered the same thing! Not too sure of the cost involved (probably expensive) but why couldn't a person use this technology to reproduce hard-to-get body parts?  Nothing real big .... for now but, maybe in the future.

[Old Moparz]

The company that does this, their name is mentioned in the video. I would like to look them up & contact someone to ask about expense. My guess is that it wouldn't be extremely expensive since there are no tooling costs. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but if the machine uses scanned info to make the "printed" part it might be feasible as a cost effective process.

[Troy]

It is not cheap - well it wasn't when I was looking into it. It's a process primarily used for creating prototypes which are then used to create the tooling for the more common methods of mass production (casting, etc.). For some small runs it's feasible but you're tying up the machine for however much time it takes to make each part. Turn that into hours times the billable rate and it's not practical. This is called an "additive" process which is about the opposite of CNC machining.

Troy

[bobs66440]

Jay Leno has been using a similar device for some time now. Pretty cool! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggvzcGdZsTc

[bull]

I've seen one of those printers at work and while it's good in concept there are some issues with the parts. First off, and probably the most obvious, is that it will only work with plastic parts so you wouldn't get anywhere with metal stuff (other than with the scanner). Second, you are limited by size. It cannot do a '68 Charger grill section unless you did it in two pieces and then stick them together. Third, the finish quality is not that great. Some of the edges are jagged, some of the thicknesses are off, etc. There would have to be some time spent cleaning the parts up by hand to make them passable. But overall the machines are both very impressive and I think they will get much better and less expensive with time.

[Mike DC]

I could see these things being used to create the tooling for small production runs. 

[440]

Someone printed a 3D bicycle that you can ride, not sure who but I read an article on it a while back 

[1969chargerrtse]

Jay Leno has been using a similar device for some time now. Pretty cool! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggvzcGdZsTc

Yep Jay has a link on his site.  My son told me they have a machine in his school.  He was like, yeah we have that.  I think it's amazing.

[64dartgt]

We have had some made at work by a vendor making an inhalation actuator with a dose counter for us.  Another problem is that the plastic is pretty brittle.  The parts were useful to get an idea how the final blow molded parts would look and interact, but were not fully functional.  If you have a good original piece to work from there are better ways of producing parts these days.  The problem isn't making one.  It's usually making many at a good price.  You need metal molds for that.  Cost for metal molds for our project were about $2MM for five small detailed parts and it will take six months to tune and validate the new molds.