Ever wonder why very small items are a problem?

A single part or item is in that block? They can't mass produce several items in a single block?

Han Solo might be in there?

You have to wonder if they are making much money after all is said and done?

When I left the CAD/CAM/3D Modeling industry in 1991, all the rage was tolerancing.

When I returned to the industry in 2004, all the rage was tolerancing.

When I left in 2006, all the rage was tolerancing.

Today, all the rage is tolerancing. Or clearances. Or definition. The demos I see today from Siemens are the same demos I produced for Computervision in 1991! I guess they are a little bit more real, but it's hard to tell. You can only pull apart the transmission for a tractor in so many ways. Yeah, it took 45 minutes a frame back then, and now only 1/20 second, but that factor is far less than the increase in hardware power alone.

For my 2D digital cutter that cost $180, I design in .001 mm increments. It probably can't cut thick styrene with anything near that precision, but it makes me feel good that I've toleranced my part exactly 1.016 mm to allow for two thickness of 0.508 mm.

3D modeling today, as I understand it, is geometrically precise. I recently bought a FUD loco shell that was, well, OK--and extraordinarily fragile, as I broke the railings just removing it from the packaging. And the rendition was--well--layered.

But then I read that the precision of the process is much less than what I can see with my eyes or feel with my fingertips. I know it's the wave of the future, and that things will get finer and finer but, after my industry experiences, I do wonder about when it will happen.

Pete Nolan wrote: But then I read that the precision of the process is much less than what I can see with my eyes or feel with my fingertips. I know it's the wave of the future, and that things will get finer and finer but, after my industry experiences, I do wonder about when it will happen.

One might say your industry experiences could be an indication of the time frame needed to bring 3D modeling up to speed (i.e. forty-five minutes to render a frame in 1991 vs. 1/20th of a second to render the same frame today = more than a 13,500 percent increase in quality productivity over the past 20 years).

Now let’s use those statistics with the 3D printer industry, and in twenty years – Wow! However, we must also understand that in the past twenty years many other improvements have taken place in manufacturing and electronics that should dramatically, if not exponentially, reduce the number of years needed to accomplish this same sort of increase in quality productivity. Even if the rest of the industry doesn’t migrate to molecular printing, just imagine what the standard 3D industry will be like in just five years.

Joe

stonysmith wrote: Interesting tidbit: this printer prints at only 1cm / hour.. the block above took 22 hours to build, and then also took 22 hours to cool down afterward.

Reminds me of the time I was touting a Qume daisywheel printer with the utterly amazing speed of 15 CPS--characters per second. It cost $2500 in 1980-ish dollars. How far we've come.