Rumms it happened. The 4-year-old filius of your visit barely discovered the living room garde as a climbing rope, the filigree plastic holder of the designer curtain bar acknowledges her with a quiet “crack”. Busted, from, basta. Getting a spare part for the thing is hopeless. The result: A small, broken plastic part makes the 3 meter long curtain holder to bulky.
Magnus.de: 3D printer "RepRap Mendel" from the PC magazine
Imagine you have a 3D handscanner in the drawer. This allows you to scan the defective part, then quickly and painlessly print it with the 3D printer in the study. There is already something about science fiction. And it even works very well (see PC Magazine, issue 5/2010, page 114-117).
The 3D printing world of tomorrow
Alone the price of such plants moves in areas, which should be hardly interesting for Otto-Normalbürger. It's a pity, because the use of 3D printing - also known as "rapid prototyping" - is enormous. Think about the popular hobby model building. Whether it's airplanes, cars or trains, the possibility to create three-dimensional structures at the push of a button from scratch, would greatly enrich your leisure time.
3D printing for everyone
Ruckzuck would make the local station scale-scale for the model railroad. The same applies to the deck superstructures of a model ship or the engine mount of the electric vehicle. Also, 3D printing could enrich everyday life. The bike holder for the smartphone, an individual watch case or the missing gearshift knob of the Youngtimers, applications for 3D printing, there is a great deal in the private environment.
Picture gallery
In the professional field, 3D printing and / or rapid prototyping has already become established by the general public. Nevertheless, the market for 3D printers is quite manageable. Even leading manufacturers manufacture their devices at most in 100-piece quantities, which means that the prices for corresponding devices are only slowly declining.
The cheapest commercial 3D printer is currently the Solido SD 300, which comes from Israel (see "Affordable, professional 3D printer" later in the article), which still has a hefty 8000 euros. Also one of the bargains is HP's Designjet 3D - with 15 000 euros but certainly no carry-along. More powerful devices cost ten times.
The private man only has a tired smile at these price presentations. But also it can be helped. In the meantime, there are several self-construction projects that make 3D printing affordable for the savvy hobbyist as well. We've picked out a promising open-source project - the RepRap Mendel - and wanted to know how much effort the dream of their own 3D printing is.
The Mendel does not bear the name of the founder of the doctrine of heredity. Finally, it was a development goal that the 3D printer can reproduce all the specific parts of its mechanical structure.
This is nice and good, but the beginner is confronted with the classic Hen Egg problem: In order to produce the parts of the printer, one needs a printer first. In addition, a lot of time and patience is needed to assemble all boards, components, motors, bearings, screws, cables and threaded rods.
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