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Comment by endtwist | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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