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Comment by zoomzoom | Hacker News Reader

Actually this is pretty amazing. A vacuum cleaner was one of the big appliances that broke down the barrier of machines doing chores (along with the dishwasher and clothing washing machine). The fact that reprap can already produce even a bad vacuum cleaner is ana amazing sign of the potential that this technology has and how quickly it is moving.

Very interesting.

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They are not printing a vacuum cleaner; they are printing some of the parts, but you still need to buy A DC motor, Tape Filter (some cloth; see later), Power Supply.

Anyway, I wish they focused more on the real advantage of these things which is to produce replacement parts when a 5 cent piece breaks on a 100+$ object. Think being able to replace the little plastic tab on your remote control so you don't have to resort to duck tape to keep the batteries from falling out. Or one of those clips on your backpack that let's you readjust things without just tying a knot in them.

There are definitely people working towards this. Allot of 3d printable replacement parts are already on thingiverse but many have to be product-specific so it can be difficult to find exactly what you need. A perfect example is the remote control tab you mentioned which will be different on each remote control.

3D scanners have been touted as a way to solve this (scan your object, print a new one) but I don't think the resolution will be high enough any time soon to print reasonably aesthetic replacements. The real solution in my opinion is to make MCAD easier and more affordable so it's easier to design a replacement then to walk to the store.

FYI. backpack buckles can be downloaded here: http://www.thingiverse.com/derivative:1113

I bought the DC motor for the second one I'm making at active surplus for $1.95. The cloth was under hacklabs sink in a package of 10 that cost ~ $5, and I didn't use a full cloth. The tape was sitting around, but probably cost about $2 (the one I used this time was taken out of an old vacuum cleaner, ironically enough). The power supply was a fancy one and would cost >$100 but I could have bought a cheap converter for $5. And I used a dollar or two of plastic.

So, even if I'd had to buy everything from scratch, it only would have cost me ~ $15. Since that wasn't the case, it only cost me my time and some negligible expenses. Meanwhile, the cheapest portable vacuum cleaner I could find at the stores I went to was $39.99 + tax...

Also, we're not that far from printing motors. Fab@home has printed metal by dissolving it into a thick paste and others have printed grooves and run solder through them. Once I can print metal coils, I can print a motor... (Some motors don't need an internal magnet -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_motor)

Not really great examples. As you state duct tape already does the job for the battery door, and those clips are mass produced in china and can be bought for a dollar.

There are areas where it's an obviously better/cheaper solution than the alternatives. The best example I've seen recently was the Pixar 3D zoetrope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKPtmXK--bA

Each item is unique in the world, they only need 1 of each (per zoetrope), they already have 3D models in the computer. Another niche I heard about was classic car owners printing out moulds to cast replacement parts for their cars. Or the guys that prototyped the glif stand for iPad. These are the things that these will be used for first.

I wonder what laser printers were first used for when they were tens of thousands of dollars to purchase? And if anyone's graphed the decline in price and increase in availability/usage over time and compared it with 3D printing's progress to guess when we'll all have one to print out our kids latest 3D model and display it proudly on top of the fridge.

The other thing that blows my mind is I can get an open source vacuum cleaner from github.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spime

Sterling's been harping on this for quite a while. And, like all predictions, I assume it will be partly wrong. However, it will be interesting to see what is correct.

I think the biggest thing after self-production will be cradle-to-cradle. We're starting to see great advances in the use of traditional materials: glass, metal, fabric. Traditional foresight predicted "magic" exotic materials, whereas we're starting to get such a handle on the existing materials that we have exotic implementations of old, boring things. Gorilla glass is a good example: plain glass, but with a couple of atoms replaced and moved around. We no longer have to tape a clock and a radio together to make a clock-radio.

Being able to use these materials everywhere means that it's easier to melt down your phone to fuel whatever looks good on github.

You can also get 3D printers, eg https://github.com/hacklabto/Hacklab-RepRap

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