New 3D printer uses standard A4 paper to make complex models | Hacker News Reader

New 3D printer uses standard A4 paper to make complex models

mcortechnologies.com

The marketers working at the company should be taken out back and flogged. Show me the device and tell me how it works!

From what I can tell, it's like taking a big stack of paper, gluing all the pages together and then carving it into the object of your desires. (The carving and stacking order may be reversed.) And apparently, it's cheap, since it's run-o-the-mill paper.

A piece of paper is added to the stack and cut. Adhesive is applied. Another piece of paper is added to the stack and cut. Adhesive is applied. And so on.

Yeah, seems like a plotter with a z-axis control and a 3 axis glue dispenser. Pretty smart application of the technology. You can get a desktop plotter for <$300 at craft stores in the suburbs. this just adds an adhesive step and dept. Great way to solve the problem without relying on breakthroughs in materials science.

I think your right about the marketing. They say it has something to do with a patented, selective adhesive application technology, but would be curious to know how they remove the excess paper and smooth the finished surfaces. Looks like a great low cost item. If the machine is reasonable priced it seems like they could give Desktop Factory a run for their money in the low cost space.

Why don't they just use solidified wood pulp, and remove the paper gluing step? Seems inefficient to me.

Right, but you can't pop down to the local store and buy wood pulp (can you?). This does have the advantage of using something you can buy practically anywhere.

Hmm, in that case, the machine should generate solidified wood pulp from any paper waste. Then your source of material is much larger and cheaper - i.e. cast off cardboard boxes from the local supermarket, irregular shapes and sizes don't need to be glued together.

Yeah, but you've gotta buy glue anyway, so why not sell you pulp at the same time?

yters, is there a technology like that used in industry now? If so do you have a link?

Not sure. I googled "pulp molding" and saw a number of pages on things like egg carton molding machines. But, solidifying a whole block seems tougher.

Yeah, typically the issue with molded paper pulp is keeping a uniform wall thickness otherwise the moisture is trapped and you have a crusty object with a slushy inside.

Could they build it in layers? Or is the best way to do that to just do gluing, so it's back to the original idea?

This is particularly interesting, especially as opposed to the plastic and resin-based printers. While less useful should someone want to actually use the printed parts, it definitely has its uses under a great number of circumstances, such as models (e.g.: dental, as they show), or cheap custom-fit packaging.

Looking at the cost of these models ($9 for the model of a head, $1 for the model of the teeth), I would love to have one of these just to print up things for prototyping ideas or just as models to paint. As well, I could see many companies adopting this as a secondary tool to the resin-based machines, being a cheaper way to prototype things roughly so they can refine it and then print a more complete prototype on the resin-machine.

On that note, anyone have any idea how much this machine will cost?

endtwist, totally agree. the reduction of cost to that level would make this ideal for consumer applications too, like toys. Could imagine all sorts of uses for a tool like this, if it can truly produce parts that cheaply. I think the only other concern would be time. if it takes 10 hours to produce a model that is going to be a barrier.

10 hours isn't a long time, relative to the amount of effort it would take to produce something similar with other materials or older processes.

You are right, I'm just thinking about it in terms of production rather than prototyping. 10 hours is nothing in an engineering office, but if you are trying to produce low price point consumer products, or custom packaging, or something along those lines it becomes cost prohibitive.

Please don't use something this wasteful (paper) for production.

Lallysingh, I totally agree with what you are saying, but you need to balance the "wastefulness" with the environmental benefits:

Lower embodied energy - With personal fabrication machines more products can be produced locally. This reduces the need for transportation, warehousing, returns, and a great deal of scrap.

Solid Waste Management - There is a raging debate in environmental circles regarding the use of paper vs. plastic grocery bags. It turns out paper bags have a number of problems. Their recyclability and biodegradability work in their favor though. These things could be composted or recycled. Plastic items for similar purposes will be in landfills for more than 10,000 years.

All very good points. Is there a way to do this without the rest of those sheets of paper going to garbage? Maybe if it glues small rectangles together across instead of a large sheet of paper?

Some of this reminds me of some of Stephenson's earlier work with raw material feeds being distributed as we do water, with local fabrication at home in a microwave-sized device.

Paper based prototyping, like LOM (laminated object manufacturing), can produce parts with a similar texture to wood. They're pretty durable once finished, but a major problem is that when you're done you're part is stuck somewhere in a block of wood (a 8.5x11xN block in this case). The machine will hatch the negative areas for easier removal, but there is still quite a bit of post processing, and the final product is generally lacquered to prevent splitting.

I'm sure replicatorblog knows the current state of the art better then me, but, while this technology is cheaper than what was going on 5 to 10 years ago, its no more advanced. All of these cheap "3D Printers" have the same drawbacks people have been dealing with for a decade, they just cost thousands instead of hundreds of thousands, and are less accurate.

I feel like rapid prototyping/3d printing is going to be one of those things that is always x-years away from breaking into mainstream, where x is some constant.

Jonhohle, I know what you mean, 3D printing always seems to be in the 5+ years portion of most technical reports by companies like Gartner. I'm not a big believer in the immediate application of 3D printing, but I think progress is being made. Companies like www.figureprints.com are starting to bridge the gap between science fiction and everyday commerce. While it is certainly "nichey" we should remember that we had rotisserie baseball on Prodigy before Google and Wikipedia.

You are also right that the low cost printers aren't much better. Their value is more in exposing smart people with diverse skill sets to the technology and from there bright entrepreneurs will find a way to commercialize it. We need hackers and marketers to understand the potential before we have Amazon.com

I wouldn't be surprised if the first big inroads are in toys and game related things, but quickly swing to critical areas like medical. In any case a fun area worth watching.

I had no idea that anyone still made whole sites in flash. Horriffic !

yeah, neat technology, but the site is terrible. You can make realistic looking teeth out of copy paper and you bury the image in a crappy flash gallery 10 pics in? Hopefully the technology is better than the marketing.

Sometimes I wonder if the average person makes these amazing leaps of judgment (i.e. flash website = poor product) when they visit a site in flash.

Aren't you in the business of 3D printing also?

Kirse, I didn't say the product was inferior because it had a flash website. I'm actually a big flash fan. My comment was more to do with their presentation of info. The 3D models they produce are amazing and should be prominently featured, not at the bottom of the list. I'm not in 3D printing actually, just blog about it.

Goodbye trees :(

Ah, but what if someone uses this device to prototype a system that reduces the amount of trees used for other purposes?

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