Fascinating!

'Gadget printer' promises industrial revolution

The 3D gadget printer

The idea of printing a light bulb may seem bizarre, but US engineers are now
developing an ink-jet printing technology to do just that. The research at the
University of California in Berkeley will allow fully assembled electric and
electronic gadgets to be printed in one go. .......

More he

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3238

http://www.newscientist.com/data/ima...99993238F1.JPG

RFCOMMSYS wrote:
Fascinating!

'Gadget printer' promises industrial revolution

The 3D gadget printer

The idea of printing a light bulb may seem bizarre, but US engineers are now
developing an ink-jet printing technology to do just that. The research at the
University of California in Berkeley will allow fully assembled electric and
electronic gadgets to be printed in one go. .......

More he

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3238

http://www.newscientist.com/data/ima...99993238F1.JPG



Neat stuff.

It's reminiscent of the 3D modeling system using laser. You design the
part on the computer, then a laser makes a 3D image of the object
inside a container. Some sort of compound is sprayed into the
container and it hardens where there is laser light.

The solid model can then be used for making molds or patterns.


There's more to it than that, but that is the general idea. Not quite
teleportation, but still pretty interesting.





mike





mike

The 3D system I saw used a highpowered CO2 laser, with
green laser to see wher the beam was, writing in a liquid
plasitic solution. As the CO2 beam heated the misx it
"firmed up" and became solid. I have a little model of a
wildcat that the made for me. The plastic is not all that tuff,
and is used as a master to cast other, harder plastic.
Most often they make what might be thought of as negative,
hollow half images. A guy lost half of his mandible in a bike
accicent. They took a CAT file of the remaing half,
mirror/reversed the image, made a hollow master and cast
a replacement from a phospher rich plastic that his body
acepted. After a year or so this body had bone growing through
out the plastic you couldn't tell he had been a bad accident.
I worked in the University of Kentucky's TV department
and that was one of the neater things I saw.
Terry

wrote:

The 3D system I saw used a highpowered CO2 laser, with
green laser to see wher the beam was, writing in a liquid
plasitic solution. As the CO2 beam heated the misx it
"firmed up" and became solid. I have a little model of a
wildcat that the made for me. The plastic is not all that tuff,
and is used as a master to cast other, harder plastic.
Most often they make what might be thought of as negative,
hollow half images. A guy lost half of his mandible in a bike
accicent. They took a CAT file of the remaing half,
mirror/reversed the image, made a hollow master and cast
a replacement from a phospher rich plastic that his body
acepted. After a year or so this body had bone growing through
out the plastic you couldn't tell he had been a bad accident.
I worked in the University of Kentucky's TV department
and that was one of the neater things I saw.


Impressive. I didn't even think of medical uses. It makes perfect
sense. They could probably apply it to hip replacement surgery and
places where movement is needed, like in the joints.



mike

Xerox (and perhaps some other brand name printers too) laser printers
put serial numbers on everythng you print out.That technology has been
around for at least twenty years.That is one of the tricks the feds use
to catch up with folks printing phoney money.
cuhulin

Beam me up,Scotty.
cuhulin

Hmmmmm,can I get me an,,,, oh,perish that idea! I was at ammo school at
Fort Knox,Kentucky in November and December of 1963.
cuhulin