Forget 3D movies, 3D printing is what excites me now [VIDEO]
I'm already bored with 3D movies. Yes, Avatar was amazing to watch in 3D but every 3D movie I have seen since has been a regular 'ol movie with 3D forced upon it. In other words, the 3D didn't add anything to the movie for me.
In fact, given the choice between a movie shown in both 2D and 3D, I almost always pick the 2D one.
But just as I was about to abandon all hope for 3D technology, I stumbled upon this video demonstrating 3D printing. If you're as puzzled as I was when you read the words "3D printing" for the first time, you owe it to yourself to watch this video. It's simply incredible.
If you can not see the embedded video above please use the following link: 3D Printer
Does anyone else feel we just got one step closer to actually having a real-life replicator like the one shown on Star Trek: The Next Generation?
7 comments for this blog post so far...
July 11, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Katie
That is CRAZY!!!!!
July 12, 2011 at 7:44 am
Tracy
I’m speechless… Certainly could use something like this to replace a few of our broken toy pieces that the toy companies no longer carry in replacement :)
July 12, 2011 at 7:47 am
Heather!
Yowza. Quoting from the video, ‘this changes everything.’ Wow!!
July 12, 2011 at 9:11 am
Dick
I can’t tell if Mr. Noobie, Katie, Tracy, and Heather are just playing along with the gag or if they really believe this is genuine. It’s a really well done hoax, folks. What I can’t figure out is why anyone puts in so much time and effort to make such an elaborate hoax. But then, why does a person climb a mountain?
Look at the hole from which one hangs the wrench. It turns into a ring in the copy. There are 4 turning wheels in the original, 3 in the copy. And how would a copier know how to put in the internal mechanism to make the wrench jaws open and close?
It is a fun video, though.
July 12, 2011 at 9:40 am
Patric Welch
Dick, I spent some time looking into whether or not this was a hoax when I first saw the video and came to the conclusion it was not. There are several reliable sources who claim it to be 100% legitimate. So if it is a hoax, they got me good.
To answer your question about the moving parts, the information I found on the Internet says that the video leaves out a big part of the process that the printer itself doesn’t do. I’m referring to the 3D scanning and CAD modeling that has to occur BEFORE the printer “prints” anything.
So to me, if you have a reliable 3D model, I have no problem believing a machine can “produce” the intended 3D object.
July 12, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Dick
Patric, Now I’m becoming obsessed with this thing. I don’t doubt that it’s possible to replicate via a “printing” process a solid object. But the process would produce an object without internal “organs” such as ball bearings and linkages. The clone would simply look like the original. But this video is not an example of the process.
Compare, for example, the original at 2:07 with the copy at 3:50. The curves and general shape are similar, but not the same. And how did the hole at the bottom get transformed into a dangling ring? Did the copy machine decide to create a superior model?
July 12, 2011 at 12:17 pm
Patric Welch
Dick, I think the confusion stems from the fact that this is a printer and not a copy machine. It’s not like they put the wrench on a plate of glass pressed a button and a duplicate came out. They had to do some pretty sophisticated modeling to input to the printer beforehand.
I look at it this way. If you could take a wrench and micro-slice it into 1,000 horizontal layers, why couldn’t a machine build those 1,000 layers and the end result be an exact duplicate, moving parts and all?
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