I watched this video and was impressed. The scanning technology is cool, but the printing technology is incredible. To be able to have a physical, working model of a widget in hand, minutes after scanning the original is fantastic from a manufacturing standpoint. To be able to do this for under $20,000 is off the chart!
I work for a major Metrology outfit that specializes in manufacturing CMMs. Coordinate Measuring Machines that start at $50,000 and can go well past $1,000,000 and these don’t include any cool plastic parts printers. I can’t see how this doesn’t seriously impact the very core of our business.
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Those would be the “Widget-Widgets”
. the machines in question are still sold at closed doors, at request for special clients and they are also extremely expensive. they are also not yet producing in actual metal as you can see.
That is something that i saw they got to be able to do first in order to really be in the way to get enabled in a more mainstream way. they give 1 year for the very first one to be able to do that. 2 years for it to be sold at closed doors and at request and up to five for they to be sold openly once the price have come down enough. i have always been fascinated with these 3D printers. i remember the ones that printed in hot silicon back in the 90′s. that made the figure and it was cooled off as it was formed and then was finally laser etched. primitive compared to these new ones since it was a matter of hrs and hrs. i can only imagine the ones that will print directly in metal or other materials 5 years from now.
Organs parts/limbs parts are also going to be printed in a similar way. i just saw the latest version of the organ printer. it takes like a whole week to print a organ part/limb part and then from there it passes to several other processes that can make fabricating a organ from 100 to 150 days. very very very far from the body printer/maker from The Fifth Element. so in the future (11 years from now) “printing something” will have a seriously different meaning than now depending the context.