Rapid Prototyping

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

There are now 3D printers that produce metal parts and this process is in use for "proper" manufactured components, not just for rapid prototypes or toys.

Search for "additive manufacturing" and you should come up with some interesting results, eg

**LINK**

I wonder how many years it will be before these start to appear in ME workshops….

Muzzer

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

If 15 odd years ago someone told you it would be possible to have a CNC lathe, miller, laser cutter and 3D printer in your little hobby workshop, that person would have been burnt as a heretic.

We certainly live in interesting times.

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

Posted by John Stevenson on 27/06/2013 13:32:44:

If 15 odd years ago someone told you it would be possible to have a CNC lathe, miller, laser cutter and 3D printer in your little hobby workshop, that person would have been burnt as a heretic.

We certainly live in interesting times.

burnt as a heretic….might yet today…look at uproar when cnc finds itself into mag…..

[IVATTLMSParticipant @ivattlms]

Hi John

I started in cnc in 1982 at work neither having seen a cnc or heard of them told i going on a weeks cource to Watford to learn about cnc .The first m/c i was on a vertical m/c centre with Fanuc 6m the only way of getting the program into the m/c was write the program on A4 notepad doing the trig etc(no cad cam) the typist would type a paper tape to get it into the memory was it was proved a copy was punched out onto a tape and stored ,that was the start.I always thought about that a small version in the home workshop would be great,at this time no home computer nor did not know about the internet,went to Florida on holday and found Home Shop Machinist in a mall and adverts for small cnc,then it started i bought Ahha cnc software which i think John and i were some of the early one using it on this side of the pond and still use it suits me could go on still use a very old version of bobcad on DOS

This my adventure in home CNC

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Hopper! Dot matrix was advaced technology compared to spark printers! I cutted my real printing teeth on lione printers and then industrial scale pen printers (so special I wasn't even allowed to go in teh room, just collect the output!).

Neil

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Still using Ahha on one machine.

Very very dated now and many have upgraded to mach3 but to be honest it's served me well and still continues to do so and there is nothing in Mach3 that Aha doesn't have.

In fact when mach3 was being written Art Fenerty had acess to the manuals and a spare system I had.

In all the years I have had this the machines has broken many times, drive boards in the early days were very fragile, computers have blown up, interface cards have gone pop.

Biggest problem has been the operator [ me ] but in all honesty the Ahha program has never crashed or let me down once.

It was really on top of it's job for the time it was brought out.

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by Stub Mandrel on 27/06/2013 19:13:12:

Hopper! Dot matrix was advaced technology compared to spark printers! I cutted my real printing teeth on lione printers and then industrial scale pen printers (so special I wasn't even allowed to go in teh room, just collect the output!).

Neil

Line printers? New fangled devices! I used to feed the punched tape output from my programs into a Teletype machine, a sort of punched tape driven typewriter

Russell.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by Russell Eberhardt on 28/06/2013 07:53:37: I used to feed the punched tape output from my programs into a Teletype machine, a sort of punched tape driven typewriter

Russell.

.

.

.OT but true story.

In a previous live I used to work on trucks for various companies. One long gone was a multinational with many depot's up and down the country and we often finished up with other depots vehicles to repair if they broke down in our area.

So every morning we would ring London head shed, report on what we had in and get clearance for repairs as often if say it was a starter motor it could be under warranty from one of the agents. This would all be done while you waited.

In a move to speed things up they announced that they would be having telexes fitted and you sent your work log and they sent back later. So BT [ or whoever they were called that day ] roll up and fit this and show us how to work it.

For anyone not familiar you had a typewriter what made a long punched tape which was then fed into another machine like a telephone, with a dial that read the tape and sent it on.

So you can imagine 5 hairy arsed mechanics with fingers like tree stumps trying to do this, just when you thought it was right you made a mistake and had to start all over.

THEN once it was sent they just ignored it or if it was a warranty claim they would tell you at 4:30 and you had a 31 minute drive into the nearest town to get it replaced.

IT HAD TO GO………………………

So you would sit there and type away for 10 minutes, total and utter gibberish without even looking at the keys. Roll the tape up and then think, who can I send this to ?

Telexes had their own directory of numbers so you would look though and find a company at random or even better some company you didn't like just to cause them grief.

Ahha lets send this one to those robbing bastards at BOC………..

So off went the message. Bit later you got a message back saying they could not understand the message [ wonder why ? ] so you sent more gibberish back and basically wasted someones day but it was a hoot.

Then you would complain to Telecom that someone you never deal with was getting gibberish off your unit and out would come a guy to sort it or replace the sender. In the mean while you still rang London as the telex was out of order.

After about 2 months of wasting massive amounts of corporate time all over the UK they had them taken out and we went back to the old system.

Hairy arsed fitters 1

Suits 0

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by John Stevenson on 28/06/2013 09:15:38:

Hairy arsed fitters 1

Suits 0

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

> Teletype machine, a sort of punched tape driven typewriter

Luxury!

My first 'official' programming I had to mark up cards and put them ina pigeonhole to await punching THEN recieve them back for a cycle or two of correction and eventually they got run…

I worked out my password/username combo worked for the VDU terminals PDQ!

User:VB2 Password:RATTUS

I don't suppose tehre is still a Honeywell 6080 running at Aberystwyth, but if there is do try that!

Neil

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Posted by Stub Mandrel on 28/06/2013 20:23:20:

My first 'official' programming I had to mark up cards and put them ina pigeonhole to await punching THEN recieve them back for a cycle or two of correction and eventually they got run…

Yes, I went on to them later. Much easier to edit your programs, just swap a few cards. It was a b****r when you dropped a big stack of them though!

Russell.

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

Wish I had clairvoyance, however dim so I could guess at where this is leading us.

It strikes me that with rapid prototyping we are on the edge of something very big. We could, if it doesn't all go horribly wrong, be on the edge of distributed, personalised manufacturing. Where the only manufactured goods transported are 'replicators' and raw materials. Then, when you want something, you buy the program to have your machine make it at home.

If this does work, the primary source of wealth will be raw material mining, then the secondary source of wealth will be the sale of designs. The implications, if it goes this way, will be profound and lead to as significant a change in society as has occured with the cost reduction in computing.

In effect, the only two manufacturing costs will be raw material & design costs. It will be impossible to sustain an industrial base to society when that happens. Even our current semi-deindustrialised society will undergo significant changes should that happen.

Will it cause changes for the better? Well, on the basis of every other change that has happend before, there will probably be good & bad points to it and those who figure out a way of using it to their advantage will benefit disproportionately, and those who don't will benefit much less.

Regards,

Richard.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

If not actually making individual things at home from a disc, it might, and possibly is a way of manufacturing, and getting stuff to remote countries (my own in New Zealand) from the other end of this rock we live on. It's just like 50/60 years ago, computors would not be in every home was the idea then. IAN S C

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

I have bought and used RP parts from all known RP processes in industry for the past 20 years. (yes, they have been around that long). The first stereolithography parts we bought from a service bureau were extremely fragile and cost multiple thousands of dollars for a part the size of a computer mouse.

Some common processes available from service bureaus today, for your googling pleasure:

SLA -stereolithography (the "original" RP process)

SLS – selective laser sintering

FDM – fused deposition modeling

Objet -resin-jet printing

LOM – laminated object manufacturing

LMS or DMS – laser / direct metal sintering (EOS is one prominent machine maker in this field – makes very usable high strength metal parts)

Two excellent service bureas in USA for RP processes are Solid Concepts and Quickparts.

Today there are many processes for RP and some make fairly durable resin/plastic parts, ie FDM which is similar to the RepRap machine's method. SLS parts are similar in strength to low strength nylon. However what no one talks about is how durable or usable these parts are, especially from home use machines, and how their properties vary from moulded plastic or cast resin parts. Bottom line is they are only about 20-30% of the strength and durability of moulded or cast parts due to the low bond strength of the fused strings or sintered particles comprising the parts. They are fine for making proof of concept models for limited testing, but not suitable for usable products of normal durability.

The other issue is cost of materials. For engineering grade resins for use in FDM machines the cost is staggering, at least ten times the cost of moulding grades of the same resins. Many of these machines use large quantities of a "support" resin to make form-in-place supports under cantilevered areas of the part as the parts are built. Many FDM machines have inefficient support generation programs and use far more support resin than actual part build resin. This is wasteful, expensive, and removing the support resin takes a lot of time. Parts are frequently damaged during support removal. Of course one of the FDM companies' main revenue streams is the sale of these resins, so it is in their interest for users to buy LOTS of it. Thus the support generation programming has not changed for many years.

Until the strength and cost issues can be improved, home manufacturing of parts for everyday articles will likely not become a widespread thing. It is a great model, hobby and educational tool though. It could eventually be prevalent in homes. It really is at the same stage right now as the very first home computers were in the early 1980's.

JD

 

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 12/07/2013 13:05:09

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 12/07/2013 13:06:18

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 12/07/2013 13:07:11

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Some interesting ideas and information here

Martin.

[EnnechParticipant @ennech]

There is a process called Sand printing used to produce sand castings without the need for a pattern. I recently had a quote from a UK supplier to produce a casting weighing 32 kg by the sand printing process. After I had finished laughing I produced pattern and coreboxes and two castings for a combined total of half the price of the sand printed quote for 1-off. Snad printing has a long way to go yet!

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Did that include your labour costs? Or machine time if you CNC cut the pattern?

[EnnechParticipant @ennech]

It was the price I charged my customer, so it included all

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

High Street 3D Printing made the BBC News this morning

[ make of that what you will ]

MichaelG.

[Bill PudneyParticipant @billpudney37759]

About 15 or 16 years ago we were trying to make possibly the most complex single part I had ever seen. The programmers couldn't visualise the thing, so my boss suggested getting it sterolithed (I think it was stereolith anyway) It took me several days to get the required security clearance and confidentially agreements lined up, then the electronic model was emailed to the stereolithers. A week later I had to go to Melbourne to pick the part up. It cost (from memory) about AU$7,000, but it cut our programming time by a lot, and helped to ensure that the first off was somewhere near the mark. The model was invaluable for working out set ups, fixtures etc. As a result the firm where all this took place is still making the part.

cheers

bp

[BaldricParticipant @baldric]

BBC news item here.

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

POI
Cutwell tools are offering 3d fused filament printers

…its only a matter of time

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Theres a program on DW TV (German) at the moment, using lazer melting for manufacturing metal components. Ian S C

[JAParticipant @ja]

Posted by Ian S C on 31/07/2013 15:49:17:

Theres a program on DW TV (German) at the moment, using lazer melting for manufacturing metal components. Ian S C

LDM (Laser deposited metal). About ten years ago we used it at work to produce small, very complex, items made of high temperature alloy. There were only two concerns in the UK that had the equipment.

The economics of the work were interesting. The "printing" was done on a three foot turntable and the operation was very expensive. However if one was making a lot of identical small items all on the table at the same time the cost of each item was very competitive with other manufacturing techniques.

I would guess that we could be seeing "cast iron" parts made by LDM being sold to us within ten years.

JA

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

There is an interesting video of jewellery manufacture (sintering) here.

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