This company printed out a working Browning (COLT)1911.
http://blog.solidconcepts.com/industry-highlights/1911-3d-printed-guns-will-sell-lucky-100/
I would love access to a metal sinter printer! Of course i would make car parts and little instrument models instead of guns....
I expect the consumer market to flood with 3d printers this year.
I'm so confident of this that I'm about to roll some serious funds into 1 or 2 3d printer companies. I've got my eye on one in particular.
I don't know a whole bunch about it but there is so much buzz afoot that I don't want to miss this boat. It harkens me back to the time when the CEO/founder of Mindspring Enterprises (now EarthLink) was interviewing me and him saying to me "I'm not sure if this internet thing will take off". About 2 years later he walked away with a cool $240million. I wasn't able to jump on that bandwagon at the time but a bunch of friends did and they made a ton of money real fast.
The printers are still a bit pricey but I expect that to change in the coming months.
I remember buying my first scanner. It was a big flat-bed and somewhat heavy and cost me near about $1k. But, that was back when I had money to burn on new toys. Nowadays you can buy $100 printer that has the scanner built-in - with OCR! Back then a decent OCR software package was about another $1k.
The point is, cool new technologies come out and are pretty much not affordable to the household lay person. Then it catches on and the prices fall out big time and everyone is buying the "new toy".
Hey who knows. I might could make myself famous printing out little "BigE hold my beer and watch this while face-planting into icy concrete action figures". 😀
Another good market to watch for will the suppliers of the printing material. What is it? A coil of some sort plastic? I really don't know. That would be similar to laser printer toner cartridges.
Thoughts anyone?
I've been monitoring several different startups on Kickstarter. Some look promising. This could be useful for surveying a lot or buildings that would show the client an actual model that they can visualize much easier than a topo drawing. I scan bridges etc. and would like to make models for the bridge engineers. But I am just giving it thought for now. Have to sell the idea to the boss first.
If you live in or near ca and are into this stuff, there is a huge 3d print expo coming up in burbank.
I am so there! Thanks for posting
