3D printing

[peterwaller]

At the Reading Robot Club Andrew Hibberd showed me some robot parts he had manufactered using a 3D printer. Although I had heard of the process I didn't really know what could be achived or how so I had a look around the internet and found the following rather impressive demo.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=u7h09dTVkdw&NR=1
There are more demo listed on the same page.

[Simon Windisch]

Wow, it's like SF

Simon

[BeligerAnt]

We use this process at work for getting prototype parts made. The process is also known as stereo-lithography, and it is very cool!

I think there are various materials available, but the one we use at work is quite brittle. It will be interesting to see how Andy's new creation stands up to battle...

We use a company in Belgium (don't have the details to hand) and I think Andy used someone in Holland.

Nice to see some new technology entering the world of Ants.

[razerdave]

Apparently you can submerg the model in superglue to make it really tough, so here's hoping it will survive the knocks

[leo-rcc]

Tim has tried that once as well. Didn't work out to well.

[Cavecrusher]

the problem with the stuff is the fact that you built it in layers, so the material properties are very direction dependent.

But the technology has progressed to the fact that they can print titanium parts now. That would be really interesting for an antweight

[slurp]

It seems that a lot of schools, with technology specialisms, are getting these in for classes to use.

This makes for interesting robot building when there's a club associated with the schools. Some will give a price for "low cost" production from suitable file types, this means that it's worth down loading something like co-create's personal edition for your robot design

regards,
colin