MIT’s New Desktop 3D Printer Technology Increases Speeds up to 10x

DooKey

DooKey

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Researchers at MIT have developed a prototype 3-D printer that is up to 10x faster than current consumer printers. One of the things that makes this much faster is their use of a laser to help melt the plastic faster. Once this technology makes it to market I bet we see much faster adoption of 3-D printers in businesses and homes. You can read about the abstract of the research here. Check out this video of the tech in action.

Watch the video here.
 
I would guess it's probably for a vacuum instead of pushing air. If they're using a laser, I'd be worried about volatiles coming off the plastic. Looks like the same sort of setup you see in a laser CNC to me.
 
So 3d printers have reached dot matrix level of technology now. give them another decade and we'll be in star trek territory.
 
You know what 3D printers are cool for?

Making DND items. Like tables, doors, figurines, etc.
 
BloodyIron said:
You know what 3D printers are cool for?

Making DND items. Like tables, doors, figurines, etc.
Click to expand...
Maybe more importantly so would be the ability to create an elaborate custom map for RPGs or wargames in sections and piece it together as needed. You can always substitute another figurine but I feel like seeing the painstakingly made (in the old days) maps for like Warhammer and such made more of a difference from the audience's perspective.
 
There are many different free tiling systems you can use to print out squares of town, dungeons, caves, etc. to make custom playing boards with a 3d printer. Hit up thingiverse.com and do a search for OpenForge, they probably have anything you'd be interested in. For wargames, we tend to just make terrain pieces instead of trying to sculpt an entire board. It would take forever to print out full board sets of terrain and it would be a static setup. Printing out a bunch of buildings, hills, trees, etc. and then setting them up like traditional terrain seems to work better. The nice thing about 3d printing them is that you can make Normandy-style houses if you're doing Bolt Action, or traditional Viking/Roman/whatever if you're doing historicals, and so on. Having pieces that are thematically-correct is actually pretty neat.
 
Some printers can do that now with the right hotend, quality is questionable though. The y-axis has to be extremely light to pull this off in a core xy printer, carbon fibre tubes and other light weight parts help.
 
BloodyIron said:
You know what 3D printers are cool for?

Making DND items. Like tables, doors, figurines, etc.
Click to expand...

i have a great side business in RPG products with my 7 printers going. People want things and they don't want to pay an arm and a leg for resin, injection molded parts, and crappy chinese made trinkets.
 
Drakeniir said:
So 3d printers have reached dot matrix level of technology now. give them another decade and we'll be in star trek territory.
Click to expand...

Check out some of the other technologies for 3d printers. There's a few DLP/SLA machines that are kick-ass in detail and speed.
 
Verge said:
I'm still searching for a reason why me, or any other average person would need a 3d printer at their home.
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Being as the "average" person doesn't fix, or repair, or build anything... you're probably right.
 
BloodyIron said:
You know what 3D printers are cool for?

Making DND items. Like tables, doors, figurines, etc.
Click to expand...

I have used mine to make a speed limiting gear on our fork lift that lost a tooth, replace parts in an old clock that isn't made anymore, and funny enough, nylon bushings. Lots of little stuff like that. Also, a 14" tall madcat mech for my nephew lol.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Is that hose blowing air on the thing to solidify it more quickly?
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Yes most likely that is it. FDM or FFF printers often benifit from cooling the printed material as fast as possible to try and minimise part warping/deformation.
Paladin21 said:
If they're using a laser, I'd be worried about volatiles coming off the plastic.
Click to expand...
If they are heating it to the point its turning gaseous.. they've gone a little to far with the heat. ;) Waaaay to far.

Verge said:
I'm still searching for a reason why me, or any other average person would need a 3d printer at their home.
Click to expand...
So are you telling me you've got some brains and havent' fallen sucker to the news blurbs and marketing B.S. that "every home will now have a 3D Printer"? ;) Common sense isn't that common hey!
 
Dude, that's really cool!

KarsusTG said:
I have used mine to make a speed limiting gear on our fork lift that lost a tooth, replace parts in an old clock that isn't made anymore, and funny enough, nylon bushings. Lots of little stuff like that. Also, a 14" tall madcat mech for my nephew lol.
Click to expand...
 
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