You’ll Download Physical Objects Sooner Than You Think | Hacker News Reader

You’ll Download Physical Objects Sooner Than You Think

mashable.com

67 pointscoolrhymes28 comments

While it's an interesting subject, this article is terrible. No actual news was contained within. A bunch of hyperbole about what "might" happen, without any evidence besides hearsay. Your time would be better spent reading the wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printer

a typical mashable article... quantity over quality, how sad

How can you have an article about downloadable physical objects without mentioning Shapeways? http://www.shapeways.com/model/227707/ The uploader chooses the materials the object is available in (Shapeways will print it in that material and send it to you), or whether you can download the file and print it yourself. http://www.shapeways.com/model/449442/the_piratebay_ship.htm...

They also neglected to mention http://www.thingiverse.com/

This is bound to disrupt a lot of industries. I can already imagine the massive lobbying efforts and propaganda against it.

My dad owns a tool and die design/engineering shop, they generally make fairly small, specialized parts for automotive design. When I was young, I went to work with him to see what he does, and noticed a wax model of the project they were working on. He said they model the project by hand to get a good vision of what they were designing (this was before 3D CAD came around). When they were nearing completion, they'd present the wax model to the customer to make sure all the specifications were right. If they were, my dad would complete the design and send it out to the die makers. The die makers loved having a handmade physical model of what they had asked for before they paid for the completed design (which could have had unseen errors).

Fast forward a few years, and my dad acquired a competitor who happened to have a 3D printer. Now my dad's company would make the design, print it out, and show it to the customer. One customer did not like this at all, so much in fact that they sued my dad's company. If the engineers could make these parts themselves, how long until they could make them with metal? How long before the die makers were turned redundant? The die makers have a lot of money invested in very expensive equipment to make these parts, and now 3D printers can make plastic replicas of them much cheaper (though there are obvious downsides in terms of scale and tolerance).

When the company filed suit, they dropped the contract with my dad's firm (which happened to be the die maker's only design shop) and spent all their contingency funds on the suit. The company was bankrupt before it ever saw court. So yeah, this technology has a lot of important industries very concerned.

Did the suit have merit? Was it in any way contacted to the technology, or just a revenge?

Gah, I posted a comment and HN ate it.

Here's the gist: I don't know all the legal details because my dad and I are not that close. The company sued for "unfair competition" or whatever the legal term is. Since my dad's shop had the full specs and customer list of the die maker, they were afraid the engineers would cut out the middle man, so to speak. The die maker wanted them to stop building models completely and dispose of the printer.

I can't say if the printer was the only factor, but they never had a problem with the hand-made models.

Thanks!

donated a 3D printer worth several hundred dollars for him to use at school.

Can a 3D printer really be acquired at this price level now? Does anyone have any model recommendations in this range?

> RepRap was the first of the low-cost 3D printers, and the RepRap Project started the open-source 3D printer revolution.

(from http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap)

I believe this is one, but you'll have to build it yourself after sourcing parts.

If you're really interested in buying one, there are a few kickstarter projects trying to break the sub $1000 market via RepRap designs. Here's one: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printrbot/printrbot-your...

I wonder how this affects the mechanical engineering labor distribution in firms. Perhaps smaller shops like in software?

Small shops, fewer workers and many more new shops (since they cost little to start).

This is also the future of recycling. Your soda bottle will become a toy will become part of your shoes will become...

> Your future soda bottle will become a toy will become part of your shoes will become...

Our current and past soda bottles have become the great pacific garbage patch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

I think the future of recycling is going to be more largely affected by a reduction in consumption.

Reducing consumption is, by definition, not recycling. I think what he was getting at was you will be able to make your waste into useful things, or set up a recycling shop to collect waste from others.

No need to turn into Al Gore from a lighthearted take on the future of 3D printing.

Please note that I didn't say the future of recycling is the reduction of consumption, but rather that it would be more largely affected by a reduction in consumption (than by 3d printing).

Oh, and sorry for briefly turning into Al Gore there. :P Good catch!

The big winner will be an easy 3d modeler.

There are a few existing applications. Autodesk have released a hobbyist package (http://www.123dapp.com/) and there's online ones as well (https://tinkercad.com/). OpenSCAD is my choice because it allows you to parametrically design objects with a scripting language.

Yar. there's also blender, sketchup, wings3d, art of illusion - there's a ton.

I guess, it's easy for me to imagine a shape - i can draw that shape on a piece of paper, but i find it hard to express that same shape using modeling software.

Say, wrap some text around the surface of a sphere. I'm pretty sure i could, letter by letter, orient and kern text in OpenSCAD but it would take me a long time to do.

i imagine in the not to distant future there will be a motion tracker or kinect app to allow shaping stuff like clay - or maybe just use clay and scan it in.

In any case, all the software i've used feels clunky. iMovie for modeling will be a big deal.

A simpler way to do stuff like text wrapping is through scripting. I'm learning Rhinoscript right now, and soon RhinoPython will be released from beta allowing anyone with python skills to manipulate 3D form pretty easily. I agree though that there isn't anything truly simple for stuff like this.

I cannot stress how clunky any sort of 3D modelling without haptic feedback gets. Sure, I could make a clay modelling kinect app pretty damn quick (I even think I've seen one using professional 3D mocap systems before) But they take about as much time to get used to as more standard modellers, And zooming the editing space to do detail work is almost impossible for the human mind to comprehend. ]

ZBrush is fairly intuitive. You paint the mesh into empty space. http://www.pixologic.com/home.php

But it's not particularly useful for the kind of parts we'd like to be able to 3D print, in general.

> The big winner will be an easy 3d modeler.

Oh, I agree 100%. I was thinking a phone could be ideal here. You'd just wave it through the air, drawing what you want, you could review what you've drawn in the screen and adjust parameters, and it could vibrate to give haptic feedback to help you draw in a straight line, or let you know when your path connects to another that you've drawn. Stuff like that.

Unfortunately, it looks like there's too much noise in the accelerometers to make the double integration to position meaningful. Something like Sensor Fusion[1] can make it more accurate by incorporating data from the gyroscope and compass, but even so it's not enough.

In any case, like you I hope someone develops something intuitive to really help 3D printing take off. The future should be interesting...

[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7JQ7Rpwn2k

I don't know if you've tried to use 3d non haptic input devices before, turns out that they suck for modelling. and not due to noise or lack of precision issues. The main problem is that a general person's absolute 3d positioning skills are pretty poor, and even there 3D directional skills are pretty damned poor.

Making general models by waving a phone around would be difficult enough, I can't imagine trying to use it to create a model detailed enough to actually print a usable part.

Now, making 3D modellers is actually something I have a lot of experience with. If anyone wants to have a discussion about how we could actually create an interface for a 3D modeller targeted at consumer modelling of 3D printable parts; Well, that's a discussion I'd love to have.

"You wouldn't download a car, would you?"

(sorry, it had to be done)

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