A little on the 3D printer

This was a fantastical technology a decade ago but they predicted
desktop units within the decade. Low and behold there are desktop units.
There are even inexpensive ones below £200. There are colour ones though
the cheaper models and one colour.

It's not quite become the market that's dominated the headlines or
advertising slots in the media. People still need to assemble their
items so it's not quite as convenient as ending the problem of posting
online purchases. The major breakthrough will be materials which have
properties alterable at the print stage so it becomes possible to print
a pair of spectacles with a single print material that can be
transparent or take the properties of metal.

Microtrends: Printing in 3D - Times Online
<http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article1839765.ece>
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Microtrends: Printing in 3D
3D printing is cool, expensive and heading for the mainstream. It lets
you print out anything you can build on your computer screen into a
little plastic model
Tom Whitwell

Imagine a machine the size of a photocopier which fills up with a fine
white powder. Once it's finished, you fish around in the powder and pull
out a solid plastic model of whatever was on your computer screen, in
full colour. Three-dimensional printing is gradually, and rather
expensively, approaching the mainstream.

The real thing: If you've got $40,000, you can buy a Z Corp Z450 colour
3D printer, which is the real deal, straight out of Star Trek. It lays
down layers of starch-based powder, zaps it into shapes and paints them
different colours. It takes a few hours to make impossible-looking
plastic models. There's a video of the Z450 in action here at YouTube,
and here's the company home page.

The sugar printer: Physicist and blogger Windell Oskay got bored of
waiting for an affordable 3D printer, so built his own. The Candyfab
4000 uses three sacks of granulated sugar, an aquarium pump, a car jack
and some recycled printer parts. It works, and produces much larger and
cheaper models than the professionals can. As they're made of melted
sugar, they're also edible. Here's a Flickr set of the sugar printer in
action.

Print yourself: Fabjectory rents time on a Z450. They use it to make and
sell 6in high models of avatars – the characters players create to
represent themselves in games like Second Life and World of Warcraft.
For $100 and up, a Fabjectory rep will meet you in Second Life,
virtually photograph you, and a beautiful little model will be on its
way in a few days.

Impossible sculptures: Californian artist Bathsheba Grossman uses a
truly extraordinary $425,000 machine that can print 3D objects in a
mixture of stainless steel and bronze. She prints out intricate
mathematical sculptures which are 3.5in across and cost $360. They're
the perfect gift for that special geek in your life.

Do it yourself: Because not everyone has the $7,000 for even the most
basic commercial 3D printer, plenty of people are trying to build cheap
3D printers themselves. The RepRap project (slogan: 'Wealth without
money') is based at Bath University. They're trying to develop a
self-replicating machine: A cheap 3D printer which can print its own
parts, and could ultimately cost as little as £300. For $3,000, you can
already buy a Fabber kit from Fab@Home, to build a cool-looking perspex
kit which makes rather blobby rubber objects.
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