MakerBot Gets $10 Million Investment 160
First time accepted submitter chrisl456 writes "MakerBot Industries, makers (hah!) of 3D printers / personal fabrication devices, just got a big boost in the form of $10 million from an 'all-star lineup.' Replicators, here we come!"
Re:Oh god, more delusions (Score:4, Informative)
To say that these things can not make anything useful is very far from correct. Checkout RepRap [reprap.org] which is a very similar device to makerbot. Its firmware has the code built in to print the parts it is made from and is one of the tenants of the project. The video on the RepRap home page explaining the project is brilliant. These projects are indeed very worthy of getting funded.
It's not a miracle. It's just a CNC machine. (Score:4, Informative)
Additive machining is cute, but not a miracle. It's a slow process. Building up objects one layer at a time takes forever. The consumables are rather expensive. Injection molding and casting are probably 100x cheaper in quantity.
High-end [fortus.com] additive machining system [youtube.com] are getting to be quite good. The low-end machines, though, are not yet very useful. The precision is too low, the surface quality is poor, and the material options are too limited. TechShop has both a high-end commercial machine, which is usually busy, and a machine at the MakerBot level, which is almost never used. If you're making tiny parts, you need high precision.
The big advantage of many of the additive processes is that they don't have work-holding problems. The big limitation of CNC machining is that you have to clamp down the workpiece, and the clamps get in the way of what you're doing. Some part of the workpiece will be inaccessible. So most work requires multiple setups, each of which has to be aligned with the previous setup to 0.001in or better. Designs have to be planned to be clampable.
The more interesting processes [youtube.com] can work metals. But they need 500W to 6KW lasers. If you're going to work in steel, you need enough power to melt steel.
For comparison, here's a high speed stamping press. [youtube.com] This is how most of the small metal parts in the world are made. Once you get the tooling set up, parts come out at machine-gun speeds.