3D printers for making buildings

I dont think many people have 3D printers yet   Did you make any of these?

I used one at work ( lunchtime) to make a skylight for a project I built last year. I worked in SolidWorks for the design. Since I do not own the printer, my use of it is very limited obviously.  But it is a very capable system, and no doubt with see more hobby uses going forward. I also know some others on this forum and other forums have made some detail parts for locomotive builds their doing.

Bob

I really am intrigued by the whole 3-D printing idea, although I am not sure that making anything but a few parts of buildings makes sense: the skylight and such, yes, but buildings can be built from scratch sheets, etc., pretty easily and I am not sure I would want to "waste" the machine and its material on doing that, but reserve it to make parts of loco repair or scratch built stuff. 

It is exciting, though, that one can take designs made of S (or anything other scale) and zoom them to any size you need.  You wonder how long before people start selling cars and trucks this way ("1957 Chevy BelAir 3-D printer file kit - Z scale to 1:12 depending on how you set the zoom . . .

Like all things done in scale - upscaling is an exponential excercise.  That is it goes up in the x and y and z directions and also the volumn of materials.  I have a cnc router so I can do projects in most scales incuding 1 1/2 inch scale live steam stuff and it doesn't take much of change in scale to use a whole lot more material!   I also have a laser engraver and yes i will end up with a 3D printer soon.  I don't need them but boy are they fun!  Russ

What's the material cost? And the printing time?

I looked into 3D printers about a year ago.  At the time a printer that was barely sufficient from a resolution standpoint (think of it as a three-dimensional pixels) so you end up having to sand and finish pieces, but okay . . .  It was going to be about 2200-2800$ when set up.  More expensive ones, particularly those that worked in sintered metal instead of plastic, were much, much more, ($30K) but this made stuff out of a type of plastic. 

Anyway, the material it "printed" with was a type of plastic that came in feed stock reels that looked like the bulk stuff you buy for, say weedeater line, sort of like heavy fishing line maybe, that ityou loaded and the printer took what it needed as it fed in as it needed it.. The cost per reel was not that great -- can't remember the details but because I don't I'm certain it was not outstanding.  But the amount of material on a reel was not that great, so if you needed a lot of material, it could get costly.  Printer time was slow.  I think it could take thirty minutes or more to print out, say, a small model car (1:43 or so). 

Anyway, I remember calculating the cost to make, say, an entire  1:43 car kit - body, interior, tires, to paint and assemble. ( I did not have the data file for one but I figured in time they'd be available . . .).  It was reasonable, about $20 or so.  Not cheap but competitive.  The cost to make a whole building, though - like suppose you wanted to "print out" a duplicate of an Ameritown kit, would be about $180 - $200. This really didn't matter anyway since the model I was looking at could not print anything as long as a three-story Ameritown building side.  It could only do things about as big as a can of Campbells soup. 

One thing: be careful about options you have to have with the printer. The one I was looking at was advertised  only $1600 or so until you considered everything needed: the power supply, etc.  Nearly doubled the price.   One required option on the model I was looking at was an add-on that would allow you to change reels of feed stock in the middle of printing - say the thing you were making required more material than the reel had left (I think this would happen often).  You needed the option (it was some sort of additional part you added as well as some more software) so that you could pause, remove the old reel when exhausted, feed in another, and take up where you left off printing. 

I am not the least bit negative about 3D printers.  Excited aobut getting one eventually, but I want to both let the technology mature and stabilize a bit, and learn more (are there different file formats, as there are for pictures and diagrams now, that are best for different aplications depending on what you are making?  Are there aftermarket suppliers of the feed stock reels?  for this reason I really appreciate when people like SandySimon take the plunge and tell us about it.

Like anything else, it will evolve.

I bought a 600 dpi laser printer back in the early 90's - it was in the neighborhood of $8,000.00. Likewise, I bought a 21" tube monitor in 1999 for $1300.00 - must have weighed 75 pounds. Yesterday, I was in Best Buy and saw a flat screen 21.5" monitor for $189.00 - 27" for $389.00.

My guess is that until the prices come down and the speeds go up (and I agree with Harry--they will), the most practical use of this technology will be to make MOLDS to be used to cast parts in quantity using conventional materials.   This makes the economics much more plausible.

These have improved incredibly over the past 12 months - and are continuing to improve.  I needed one NOW, for reasons I will describe below - even if I throw it out in six months.  I purchased a replicator 2 from Makerbot.  The total cost was around 2200 and came with a few reels of material.  There are no extra costs.  The level of accuracy has improved considerably - but is obviously still can improve.  This device uses a material that is based on corn starch: It feels like a hard plastic (like a plastic for or knife.  They have just released a new model that can use both this material AND the plastics you will find in LEGO.  I did not want to use that material because you need it in a very well ventilated space.

Why did I get it now and why not buy a higher resolution model (which would cost 1 million rather than 2000)?  I often need small parts for different purposes in my lab.  Currently I sent them out for machining and there are many times when each piece costs $1-2000.   With this machine we quickly milled a few pieces - and they worked immediately.  Total material: $10.  If we need a machine that works at higher resolution or works in metal, I can take the same file and send it to a service that as the $1 million machine and it will cost only $40.  

As a test I made a molecule whose structure we were studying.   It took overnight, but we made it in such a way that the parts move and we could study their interactions - it was amazing how much we saw that we missed even in the 3D computer model. 

Soon these will be used for all purposes where you need just a few copies made of something.  Thus, for many train parts I think that these will be incredible.  If you want to manufacture tens of thousands of copies - this is not the way to go.  For 1-100 copies - WOW.

Over the past two days we have used this to make a few items in the lab (small chambers for our microscopes) such that it has already paid its way.   To have them machined on the outside would have taken many weeks and cost a few fold more than the cost of the whole printer.

My son made this with a 3D printer so yes I think buildings and even small parts would be very doable

I've been watching this technology for years and am amazed how it's evolving. In five years we'll have low cost, hi-res hobby versions. O'gauge buildings are big, but you make them in parts and glue them together... we're good at that.

Someone had asked me a question off list about the printer and I lost the email - sorry.  Please email me again.

If you get a really big printer, you can make one of these buildings. 

Does anyone else remember when business correspondence had to be typed because dot-matrix printing was unacceptable (no descenders and all) and the edges of fan fold paper tore when you pulled off the perforations? That's where 3D printing was last year. This year we've moved on to the equivalent of 24-pin with true descenders and the fan fold paper is Disapperf. Laser printers are still high-end and ink jets haven't made the market yet. 

I would guess that late this year or early in 2015 will be the real tipping point. Some standard for files will evolve, multicolor will make it down to consumer levels, and it will be easier and easier to find a nearby service center for large or specialty-material jobs. 

Within five years, there will be 3D printers and apps we cannot imagine. The medical uses alone are so staggering that the reports look like science fiction. This is, as I've said before, the kind of shift that cell phones and home computers caused.

I am already doing resin casting based on a 3D printed master.  The master, is solid, was estimated out at $135 for the printed version, ~$35 for a hollow version, and I can can cast them for ~$3.50 ea.

Economics, indeed.

You can now buy a KIT with decent resolution (No Sanding) for $399.00

Kit is complete, everything you need to build a working 3D printer.

Limits:

build area of 4" X 4" X 4"

Uses PLA only (Plastic like plastic tableware)

Build plate is not heated, thin items and large hollow items may warp a bit.

$599 version kit has 6" cube build area

and you can get optional ($100) heated build plates.

They are improving incredibly fast.

Love the Tardis!

John.

That's actually not all that surprising. There was an article about doing just that a few years ago and a computer model of the process. My concern would be that a building of that type isn't reinforced and could potentially crumble in an earthquake.

Hi All,

The Micro Center store here in Columbus, Ohio has quite a selection of 3D printers.  Their main web site (HERE) only offers 2 Maker Bot 3D printers but at the top of that page that I linked to; if you will select the 'CENTRAL OHIO' store from the 'Drop-Down' menu and type '3D Printers' into the 'SEARCH BOX' and choose '3D PRINTERS in 3D Printers', you'll see that our local store has many more ranging in price from hundreds to thousands of dollars.  BTW, Columbus is the home of Micro Center which is probably why this store has a larger selection.  And yes, I bought my first 24 pin dot matrix printer from them in the 1980's - a floor model 'blow out' which cost me $800.  I mention that only in case you would consider doing business with them.  Their prices are terrific and their inventory is rarely low on anything.  Even if you're not looking for a 3D printer, you might find something else you need from computers, to flat screens to cameras to cell phones - if its high tech, they probably have something of interest and THEY SHIP!  No, I don't work there, never have but I sure go there a lot.  They've been around for a long time with a very bright future ahead of them.  Ask me off forum about how they buried CompUSA - true story!

Best,

Dave