Amazing tabletop parts fabrication machine

[Edvard]

Fab@Home is a website dedicated to making and using fabbers - machines that can make almost anything, right on your desktop. This website provides an open source kit that lets you make your own simple fabber, and use it to print three dimensional objects. You can download and print various items, try out new materials, or upload and share your own projects. Advanced users can modify and improve the fabber itself.

http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Fabbers (a.k.a 3D Printers or rapid prototyping machines) are a relatively new form of manufacturing that builds 3D objects by carefuly depositing materials drop by drop, layer by layer. Slowly but surely, with the right set of materials and a geometric blueprint, you can fabricate complex objects that would normally take special resources, tools and skills if produced using conventional manufacturing techniques. A fabber can allow you explore new designs, email physical objects to other fabber owners, and most importantly - set your ideas free. Just like MP3s, iPods and the Internet have freed musical talent, we hope that blueprints and fabbers will democratize innovation.

Way.
Freakin'.
Cool.

from Admit-One

[f0dder]

Cool - those machines (albeit industrial use ones) used to cost millions

[mrainey]

I saw a demo of a stereo lithography machine at our local community college.  It's basically a 3-D inkjet that uses molten plastic instead of ink.  You load a 3-D CAD file (an STL file) into the machine's computer and it "prints" the part in .010 thick layers.  After the plastic hardens, you have a perfectly formed 3-D copy of the part.  The detail and accuracy are incredible.

They use stereo lithography a lot in the machining/manufacturing world to develop prototypes in a day that would take months of lead time and many thousands of dollars the old way.  The machines pay for themselves in no time.

[Veign]

I have a turbine blade on my desk that shows FEA colobands created from a 3D printer.  Quite impressive.