3D Printing as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2015-05-07
·
960 words · ~4 min read
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the printing press one of the greatest inventions of all time allowed for easy
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and Rapid printing of books and information which spread literacy and
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knowledge across the world the printing press revolutionized the spread of
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information but now a new method of printing called 3D printing is poised to
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revolutionize manufacturing the way it works is actually very simple using a 3D
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model as a guide a moving 3D printer head lays down a layer of material that
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has a certain amount of thickness to it then it does it again and again putting
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down one layer at a time until finally the completed model has been created
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literally from the ground up one slice at a time any complex object that cannot
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support its own weight during printing is printed along with some kind of
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scaffolding which can be easily removed or washed away once the object is
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completely printed 3D printing can be done with all sorts of materials
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different kinds of plastic metal Sandstone ceramic concrete wood and more
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and here is an example this is a Lego Technic comp ible 32 to gear you see I
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like to build robots in my spare time and while I have a lot of parts there
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are some very useful pieces that simply don't exist so 3D printing to the rescue
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once I knew what I wanted to make I needed to decide on some 3D modeling
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software to use there are a ton of options but I ended up using Google
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SketchUp which is easy to learn and use for a really powerful 3D program I would
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recommend blender but it does have a very steep learning curve once I
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finished making my 3D mod model I needed to figure out how I was going to print
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it you can buy or even build your own 3D printer but because the technology is
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still pretty new it's probably more worthwhile for most people to use a 3D
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printing service coincidentally as I was writing this episode a company called
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shapeways contacted us and offered to do some 3D printing for us I agreed and
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uploaded my exported STL files to their server I chose which pieces colors and
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what kind of material I wanted I went with strong and flexible plastic I was
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also pretty surprised to see that they can print in 14 karat gold that is one
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expensive gear a few weeks later I got a package in the mail containing all of my
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pieces as you can see the plastic is a lot different from real Lego it's rough
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and kind of chalky unless you get the polished stuff a lot of the pieces I
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designed are a bit too tight but they still fit with real Lego overall I'm
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very pleased with the results and I'll probably continue to design and print
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more pieces in the future if you'd like to print any of the pieces I've designed
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you can follow the link in the video description but being able to print
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little plastic gears is just the beginning for 3D printing imagine 3D
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printing an entire product from scratch does that remind you of anything you
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know like the replicators from Star Trek perhaps computer te Earl gry
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hot there you go okay so we probably
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won't be able to print out a new toaster or a cup of tea anytime soon but it's
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already possible to 3D print custom Prosthetics clothing food jewelry guns
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drugs even living skin cartilage and Bone scientists are currently working on
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ways to print entire organs like kidneys and livers and even with 3D printing in
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its infancy there are already many legal concerns about what people can do with
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3D printing technology easy homade weapon manufacturing and patent and
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copyright infringement among them keep an eye on this because it's going to be
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an interesting couple of decades something else to keep your eyes on
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shutterstock.com I actually made a special request to do this ad into ation
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because as a video editor I have a lot of very relevant things to say about
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them I've been using Shutterstock for the past 3 months and I love it we make
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a ton of videos at Lin's Media Group and before we got Shutterstock it was always
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such a pain to get usable images of things that I needed I can't use Google
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Images because most of those aren't licensed for reuse and they're usually
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too small anyway Shutterstock is great because they have more than 35 million
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images all of them carefully labeled and easily searchable and you don't even
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need an account to see what they have to offer also a lot of the images have
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their subjects isolated on a white background which is perfect for
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compositing in Photoshop or elsewhere and most images are available in
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enormous resolutions which is very useful for video and image creation
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whatever your project might be Shutterstock has lots of different plans
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to suit your unique image needs so if you'd like to go check them out go to
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shutterstock.com and use the offer code Techquickie 514 when you order to
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receive 20% off thanks for watching watching this episode of fast as
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possible give us a like or a dislike if that's how you feel and leave a comment
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about what you want to 3D print and also any future topics you'd like me to cover
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on fast as possible don't forget to hit the Subscribe button if you haven't
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already so you don't miss any of our videos thanks again