3D Printing?

If you are going to calculate the cost per unit you have to factor in many more variables than just material.

Well, no shit eh?

I was asked a question and provided an answer.

If you are going to calculate the cost per unit you have to factor in many more variables than just material.

True, but I was thinking about one-off hobbyist stuff where direct materials cost is the main concern.

is there a fab lab in vancouver? over here you pay 10ct/min to print with a wide selection of different sized printers, up to 1x1m base size. a 10eur/month membership gets you a flatrate for machine use. imho way more affordable than self buying

I just made this.

is there a fab lab in vancouver?

There is a makerspace, www.makerlabs.com

I contract out items to be 3d printed once and a while in my job.
Talking the guys in the fab shops, the alloy printers are going to be the norm pretty quick. Going to be a game changer.

Yah, lots of new materials coming down the pipe. Just got wind of commercial release of some fiber reinforced nylon composites that claim higher strength to weigh ratio than T6-6061 aluminum. Pretty amazing stuff.

Yah, lots of new materials coming down the pipe. Just got wind of commercial release of some fiber reinforced nylon composites that claim higher strength to weigh ratio than T6-6061 aluminum. Pretty amazing stuff.

You mean this?

Also this would be amazing to own: https://markforged.com/product/mark-two-industrial-strength-3d-printer/
Carbon fiber reinforced parts

That's the printer that handles the stuff, yes. Works by using a two-head system so the nylon is laid down and the composite is embedded as it prints. Really cool tech, and pretty low cost to get into it.

Caveat being that the reinforcement is limited to one plane, limits the applications somewhat.
I imagine the next step would be a print bed with it's own degrees of freedom or building around a spindle so that the finished part could handle loads on any 3-axis.

And that there is what makes it so exciting for a techie. Every new advance opens up a new set of problems, leading to the next step forward. New stuff to learn almost every month.

I also find the whole approach of the industry pretty interesting. At least at the consumer level, everything is open sourced, so the plans to build most of these printers can be pulled straight off the manufacturer's website. Printer controls based on arduino controllers, code freely downloadable. Some dude built a Taz 6 from downloaded plans and had it operational months before product release, and posted the whole process on Lulzbot's forum;

https://forum.lulzbot.com/viewtopic.php?f=16[HTML_REMOVED]t=3100

Arduino is quite amazing, have played around with it in an introductory course at the makerspace here. One of the makers took an old PC CD drive and along with an Arduino and a pen modified it to be a CNC "ink printer". Pretty spectacular that with one of these little $10 boards you can build and control just about anything.

Read a while back about a software that when given load paths and some other basic criteria will generate an optimized structure. The end result is a very organic, skeletal looking frame that is really only constructable via 3D printing. Allows much stronger joints than traditional manufacturing can allow for.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hilarybrueck/2015/09/01/why-computers-could-design-more-organic-products-than-humans/#6614849739b9

lots of interesting things are happening:

http://singularityhub.com/2016/04/13/how-microfactories-can-bring-iterative-manufacturing-to-the-masses/
http://singularityhub.com/2016/03/30/what-happens-to-factories-if-you-can-manufacture-in-your-home/
http://singularityhub.com/2016/05/12/the-personal-factory-is-here-and-it-will-bring-a-wild-new-era-of-invention/