Loaded-Gun.Com - Anti-Social.Com's Rejects!
General Category => Discontempt => Topic started by: (_)_)===D on March 19, 2009, 04:28:28 PM
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I stumbled on a site today where this guy makes some sick ass sculptures with a 3D printer. Some of the pieces are based off math, and some not. You gotta see this shit, and don't forget to notice that many of the pieces are priced at $420.
Coincidence? I think not.
Check out the crystal shop too, it's pretty awesome.
Man, I gotta get me one of these sculptures.
http://www.bathsheba.com/
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When I can download food, and print it out of a 3D printer, I will never ever leave my computer.
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Shit, I can think of things to print out better than food.
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yeah, so can I, but I kinda need food on a more regular basis than weed or Cytherea.
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Food is the shit.
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Wow his art is amazing! But the process for creating it is even more fascinating.
It could possibly be used to fabricate mechanical devices with electronic functions embedded directly within the molecular matrix of the structure.
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I'm not not impressed ...
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I'm not not licking toads.
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Wow his art is amazing! But the process for creating it is even more fascinating.
There's lots of research being done on cheap 3D printing technologies.
Not to get too tin-foil on you, but the idea behind it is to introduce these technologies into the third world, so that they're able to implement their own manufacturing facilities at lower costs.
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how much cheaper can you get than paying 50cents a day for 12 hours work?
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They have to find a way or they won't be able to make retarded profits.
All things being equal, a manufacturing plant in the US would generally make somwhere in the range of 1%-5% profit. That should be good enough for anyone, but it's not for the greedy fucks at the top of the ladder.
So you start working towards busting unions, cutting benfits, replacing pensions with 401ks, etc. But that's still not good enough.
So you outsource to impoverished companies. People work for compartively nothing, regulations are easier, and you pay less taxes. You sell the shit back to people in the first world (who incidently are no longer performing actual productive labor, but "managing capital" or just selling the shit to each other). You make a better profit. But it's still not good enough. You're making a ton of garbage for next to nothing, but you still run into the limit of how much people can buy (there's still a limit no matter how debt leveraged we).
So if you want to increase profits, you're left with either (1) paying the people you're exploiting more so they can afford to buy the products they're making or (2) figuring out how to make things still even cheaper. And 3D printers, while cool, produce a product that is cheaper and shittier than what you get from traditional machining. So if you can figure out how to make them cheaper and how to make them such that uneducated, unskilled labor can operate them, there's potential for extra profit. It's like paying somebody 50 cents a day for injection molding vs. 50 cents a day for machining - same price for the labor, but the process & materials in injection molding is way cheaper.
And no one is interested in option 1, really. Sometimes it's forced upon them, but most captains of industry aren't clamoring to make that a reality.
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Have you read the story of SRC in "The Great Game Of Business"?
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>>And 3D printers, while cool, produce a product that is cheaper and shittier than what you get from traditional machining. <<
While in mass production of useless crap this is likely to be true the beauty the new 3D fabrication techniques allows OR WILL ALLOW a level of complexity to the finished product that no traditional machining process can ever match. It's almost on the level of nanotechnology where nearly ( but not quite) every atom of the structure is custom placed.
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Certainly, you can make pretty complex shapes with the process, like the guy on the linked website. I've seen some pretty neat sculptures formed from plastic 3D printing, too. And 3D printing might be good for making dies/forms for other processes.
But 3D printing of metal is basically powder metallurgy, except without the phase of the process where you compact the powder. Anything you make is going to have pretty high porosity - which means that if it's used for anything other than looking good, it's going to have a very short life. I wouldn't even want an iPod case made from the process.
I suspect, though, that we'll find parts made from this technique used in applications where they should never be used. It's par for the course of manufacturing over the years. If you can cast a part instead of forging it and save a few bucks, but reduce the service life of the end product, who really cares? It means you can sell more in the end as things break!
I haven't read about SRC, but I am curious to read more.