Ideal 3D printer?

At 09:52 AM 10/9/00 -0700, dave engvall wrote:

>Oh, gee!! And all this time I thought that was what a cnc was.
>Even get to pick the media, wax, Ti, stainless steel, alloy, etc.

Annie does have a good point. For functional parts, there is nothing that
beats machining from the real material (though there are a couple of
processes that make a sintered steel part that is later copper or bronze
impregnated for 100% density). But for items where only the form counts
(as masters for replicating by casting urethane in RTV molds), SLA, SLS or
other rapid prototyping definitely has a place.

My "day job" is mechanical engineer for a biotechnology instrumentation
company, and I do all my design in SolidWorks (a fantastic program, with
great capability and good technical support.) We have CNC mills in our
in-hose machine shop, but we send out almost all of our housings and cases
for stereolithography. Even with the capabilities of CNC, the more organic
shapes possible with modern design software lend themselves better to an
"additive" process rather than a "subtractive" process, not to mention the
time saved in jigs, fixtures, tool setup, etc.

None of that dampens my eagerness to have my own little CNC in the garage
for my own projects, though! :-)

Best regards,

Randy

Randy Gordon-Gilmore ,----.___________ ______________ _________________
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