World’s First 3D-Printed Steel Footbridge Unveiled by Queen Máxima in Amsterdam | Hacker News Reader

World’s First 3D-Printed Steel Footbridge Unveiled by Queen Máxima in Amsterdam

imperial.ac.uk

12 pointsinfodocket15 comments

The finish looks horrible: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/ImageCropToolT4/imageTool/uploade...

I believe they are Dutch and they look fine to me.

That's what FDM 3d prints look like. You could of course sand the whole thing smooth but that rather defeats the purpose of 3d printing it in the first place.

I'd love to see a video on it being printed. From the looks of the layer lines.. it was done vertically?

While I don't really like the look of it, 3D printing combined with CFD-based simulation and optimization sounds pretty cool for creating new things, even at scale.

If I remember correctly the 3D Printing Nerd managed to get a showing of Bosch's new technologies on the subject on his YouTube channel and it looks crazy. Material quantity, performance, print time and cost can all be optimized for a much better overall product using some of these new CAD and prototyping technologies. As a hobbyist it looks so crazy impressive.

This is very cool, and while people here seem to be confused about the value of art or whether this was needed, a huge amount was learned in the modelling, fabrication and testing process. This is art with benefits, and it looks stunning too.

Absolutely no reason to 3D print this. Even if that ugly POS is what you wanted, you could mold it cheaper.

> Absolutely no reason to...

It's art. There's never any reason for art.

Art is a communication expressed in a specific media in order to color or give further meaning to the message. The message of an artistic bridge should be "the harmony of material and engineering evoke beauty in the work of mankind." The message here is "we pooped a bridge!"

> The message of an artistic bridge should be

Why should it be that? Why's that the only approved message in your mind?

> The message here is "we pooped a bridge!"

You're just being abusive.

You said there's never any reason for art. That's not just abusive, it's wrong. Without a reason, it's not art. And the reason here is weak. It's "because we could." That's what makes this objectively bad.

You’re confusing reason as in technical requirement with reason as in why they chose to do something. They can choose to do something without it being a requirement.

And you’re changing your comments after they’ve been replied to - please don’t do that.

I'm not confused at all. You're constructing a very unusual meaning of "reason" in your first reply in order to...?

I was editing while you replied, I had not read your reply when I hit submit.

> you could mold it cheaper

Do you mean cast? You can mold steel, but not at that scale. Per wikipedia: “Due to current equipment limitations, products must be molded using quantities of 100 grams or less per shot into the mold.”

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_injection_molding

I did mean casting, I didn't know the difference here, thanks for this info!

I’m not a fan of monarchy but Queen Máxima sounds very nerdy.

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