A Model Prints

[Aperitif]

Interesting article in the Observer today.

About four years ago, my co. was going to produce a prototype or two using this method but it was prohibitively expensive! What a fabulous, imaginative tool from thinglab.

Perhaps a 'progressive' of one's child growing up? Parents as a lasting memory? Wow!

 

[Globalti]

Engineers have been doing this for well over ten years, maybe even as long as twenty years as a way of making parts cheaply for a trial build before committing to a production mould or process. This is the first time I've seen it made trendy though and used for objects more than just machine parts.

 

[sheddy]

Rapid prototyping has indeed come a long way. The last time I looked at 3D printing a few years back, the wax models were very brittle. Won't be long until the machines are on the high street though.

 

[longers]

You want a Mammoth. Big as you like.

I'd leave the supports on. I like the look of them

 

[Aperitif]

This is the sort of thing that makes the brain hurt! It's beautiful.

If the latticework is the suporrt stuff - then I would too. Very 'Buckminster Fuller' and elegant!

 

[vernon]

3D printing in not new.

Here's a simple demonstration piece that I picked up on a visit to Leeds University twenty years ago.

View attachment 6050

Its sphere captured in a cage.

Curiously I was carving very similar artifacts from potato and deep frying them to show of my culinary skills ten years before I saw the 3D printed version.

3D printing is part and parcel of a lot of schools' technology departments though the cost of the raw materials can be prohibitive.

I keep meaning to take advantage of my school's facilities and make some faux ivory spheres within spheres. Just need to find the time to to the 3D modelling first.

 

[TVC]

I was working with this kind on thing in 1999 when we had an injection mould tool maker generate prototype parts before committing to cutting metal. At the time they had the only machine in the north east, so hospitals were using them to build models of deformed skulls from scanned data so they could make plates and rehearse operations before the patient was admitted - cool stuff.

 

[longers]

Do us a potato please Vernon.

 

[longers]

I don't understand how but there's firms able to do this stuff with metal/metallic compounds. I'm sure I've seen Titanium mentioned somewhere.

 

[Aperitif]

I was working with this kind on thing in 1999 when we had an injection mould tool maker generate prototype parts before committing to cutting metal. At the time they had the only machine in the north east, so hospitals were using them to build models of deformed skulls from scanned data so they could make plates and rehearse operations before the patient was admitted - cool stuff.

Exactly VC - and so far, out of "joe public's" field of experience, yet within the bounds of imagination...

Bag o' spheres with salt and vinegar please vernon - and no sauce!

 

[vernon]

Do us a potato please Vernon.

OK.

View attachment 6051

First one in thirty years. Click on it for an enlarged view.

 

[vernon]

Bag o' spheres with salt and vinegar please vernon - and no sauce!

It will have to be just the one. I used to have a great paring knife that made the job easy. Our current knives flex too much to make the task pleasurable and easy.

 

[longers]

Superb Vernon, you've still got the knack.

Is it sat on tonights bevvy?

 

[vernon]

Superb Vernon, you've still got the knack.

Is it sat on tonights bevvy?

The tattie's perched on a bottle of 12 year old malt, some of which I'm sipping right now.

 

[Aperitif]

Better than a 12 yr old potato.

Now, there's an idea. Could one of you print me a bottle of Cragganmore please?