Sculpture Made On A MakerBot

http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2012/10/20/cosmo-wenmans-mind-blowing-sculpture-made-on-a-makerbot/

by k0mplex • 14 years ago

68 29 14 years ago

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Nicely done. I have considered doing these sorts of sectionals on my replicator. Still working on a nice 'low density' internalized structure (solid PLA/ABS is out of the question) which provides the necessary support and rigidity. My last attempt was intersecting triangles.

joshuaheard• 14 years ago

I have seen hexagons used, like in a honeycomb.

nnnnni2• 14 years ago

I believe that's the standard reprap infill pattern.

grannyg00se• 14 years ago

It looks like the assembly and finishing of a 3D printed group of parts was taken to a whole new level. I don't see any indication that a whole new level has been achieved in the 3D printing itself. Great finished product though.

EvanMiller• 14 years ago

MYTH: 3D printers will never be able to print underwear

FACT: Wrong. Hard plastic underwear provides amazing protection and support

MYTH: 3D printers will never be able to print the Mona Lisa

FACT: Wrong again. Today you can download a 3D model for "rectangular hard plastic canvas" from the Internet, print it out using your Makerbot, and then paint the Mona Lisa on it

MYTH: 3D printers will never be able to print small, wobbly, leaky coffee cups that warp when hot beverages are poured into them, and that lacerate your lips when you attempt to drink from them

FACT: This is already possible on some of today's higher-end 3D printers

MYTH: 3D printers are useful in any way

FACT: It turns out this myth is true. Watching a 3D printer emit a hard plastic object in a color that nobody wants keeps nerds in a state of rapture that prevents them from engaging in more dangerous activities such as shooting heroin or starting actual businesses

tomkinstinch• 14 years ago

You're wrong. If you step outside the narrow world of software for a minute and look at tangible product design, 3D printing is wonderfully useful. One benefit is that it allows you to develop functional prototypes without shelling out for evaluation tooling of injection molds. Second, it's faster. Third, it can produce structures that would be difficult or impossible to produce using conventional machining or casting methods.

tjmc• 14 years ago

I don't think anyone doubts that you can make amazing structures with 3D printers. This sectional technique is a nice extension to that. What I find annoying with the current 3D printing hype is that material properties are being completely overlooked. I can make a brake disk out of sponge cake about as easily as I could print one in plastic. Neither will work though.

There's some exciting work going on at Cambridge with 3D printing using metal powders and laser sintering, but these printers will be orders of magnitude pricier than desktop plastic printers for some time.

Perhaps a nice interim approach for the maker crowd would be to combine 3D printing with lost wax or sand casting. That way, you could still print an intricate part but then use it as a pattern to create something much stronger in metal.

sown2• 14 years ago

No need to be mean.

omegant• 14 years ago

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers". He also was completely right at his time.

mtgx• 14 years ago

He clearly wasn't a visionary, but a pragmatist. Pragmatists deal in what they can do right now, and if it's useful to anyone right now. If it isn't, they ignore it. Visionaries thinks about the potential in the future and how it will be useful in the future.

turoczy• 14 years ago

I don't know if you'd categorize it as "useful," but Laika used 3D printing to do some exceptional work on ParaNorman. But again, it required a lot of retouching and detail work. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/visual-ef...

jamesmcn2• 14 years ago

I read this in the voice of an IBM mainframe sales person in about 1980, when confronted with an Apple II.

More seriously, today's 3D printers are mere toys compared to what a future atom-scale assembler could do. But they are clearly useful to some people and fun for other right now.

The Microcomputers of the '70s and '80s absolutely were toys back then too, by comparison with the bigger iron available at orders of magnitude higher prices. But they were useful, and they started us on the road to volume production that allows me to have a supercomputer in my pocket and a half-dozen supercomputer-class portable machines hanging around my home office. Not to mention all the audio gear I have built around processors ranging from a Z80 though modern microcontrollers to some very powerful DSPs.

Perhaps 3D printers are toys. But they are wonderful toys that will take us to interesting places.

sown2• 14 years ago

Just because it happened for personal computers isn't a guarantee that it will happen with home 3D printers.

It's nice to be excited about this tech but you need to pay attention to what potential customers are saying, too.

We need to find the Visicalc of home 3D printing.

xxbondsxx• 14 years ago

While a little snarky, all these points are completely valid. Plastic has limitations, _physical_ limitations, that prevent its use in real mechanical parts. 3D printing is great for desk toys or rapid prototyping, but we will never be printing cars or printing computers like everyone implies.

Computer chips are complicated. Engines have to sustain miniature explosions thousands of times a second. Plastics have limitations, and people need to realize this before hyping 3D printing too far

stewartbutler• 14 years ago

They aren't valid at all -- 3D printing isn't limited to plastic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering

http://www.solid-scape.com/products/solidscape-3d-wax-printe...

http://www.contourcrafting.org/

Also, plastic 3D printing is a low-part-order replacement for injection molding, and is significantly cheaper for short-run or prototyping. And it is not designed to be a one-stop solution, but simply part of a workflow that can be brought to small fabrication shops to permit them to construct a wider range of things.

That said, the biggest limitation of the Makerbot series of printers in my opinion is the lack of a soluble support material. The Dimension printers [1] allow you to fabricate models with both a structural plastic (ABS) and a support material (unknown) that will dissolve in a lye bath, meaning you can make complex mechanical components in one pass and then dissolve out the unnecessary sections.

[1] http://www.dimensionprinting.com/

vog• 14 years ago

I don't see the point in those "myths", as they appear to have been defined after the fact. Why not defining progress as what it is? I'd prefer a message like this:

"We're able to do X!"

What's the point of using the myth-variant of this message?

"We debunked the 'myth' that X is impossible!"

... especially if most of those "myths" actually were never stated before?

cliffbean• 14 years ago

The point is that 3D printing hype is so hyperbolic, I actually took several seconds to read that first part about underwear before realizing that it was a spoof, because it almost sounds like the kind of thing that 3D printing enthusiasts might actually say. Snarky humor is a dangerous slippery slope in online forums, but it did make me laugh.

3D printing enthusiasts are eager to draw analogies to the personal computer revolution. However, another plausible analogy is something like the Segway "revolution". Discuss.

regularfry• 14 years ago

    MYTH: 3D printers will never be able to print underwear

You may jest, but: http://www.shapeways.com/n12_bikini

tisme• 14 years ago

What use is a newborn baby?

jrockway• 14 years ago

I don't really understand why people are so excited about 3D printers when CNC mills are cheaper, more precise, and work with any material from balsa wood to granite (including metals and plastics). (I also don't understand why 3D printers are a "revolution", when computerized production has been around for decades and everything you own had a CNC mill involved at some point in the production process.)

I've used a 3D printer before. It was fun and it didn't produce a mess, which was nice, but all I have to show for it is some ugly chunks of ABS that look kind of like a child just had some fun with very melty crayons. One time when I was 5, I made a snowman out of hot glue. That's still beyond the range of $1000 3D printers.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

MYTH: MakerBot Desktop 3D Printers can only make things up to a certain size. BUSTED

This awesome photo shows the 29 unfinished blocks of the horse head before Cosmo went to work fusing them

So, not busted after all?

evoxed• 14 years ago

Like the printing resolution. Oh yeah, you can get rid of the ridges for a perfectly smooth model. They're called "interns". Bring your sandpaper and a dustmask! That being said, I'm glad that they're recognizing the ability to extend their product with good old fashioned hand skills, even if it isn't the greatest marketing pitch.

viviantan• 14 years ago

You'd still need quite a bit of artistic talent to make hard plastic look good. But would I want a super expensive and buggy 3D printer for Christmas? Yes please!!!

Btw, has anyone used 123D Catch (or any 123D software)? From what I gleaned from Autodesk's TOS, you inevitably end up granting them a irrevocable license to use your 3D models however they please. Perhaps that's why 123D remains a "hobbyist" software suite. I still haven't heard of anyone who uses it professionally.

nnnnni2• 14 years ago

Sounds like 123D Catch and the new Thingiverse are made for each other! ಠ_ಠ

delinka• 14 years ago

"MakerBot Desktop 3D Printers can only make things up to a certain size." The printer did not make the horse head. The printer produced the parts (up to a certain size) and Mr. Wenman assembled and finished it. He made the horse head.

"...but they’re not, like, museum-quality great." Notwithstanding that the printer can't finish the pieces to make them "museum quality," there are striations on the horse head that come from how the plastic is stacked up. Not Museum Quality.

While this is a fine use of 3D printing, it's not a major advance like the article tries to make it.

Sculpture Made On A MakerBot

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