{"id":10043,"date":"2013-02-02T14:28:56","date_gmt":"2013-02-02T14:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gadgets.itwriting.com\/?p=1955"},"modified":"2013-02-02T14:28:56","modified_gmt":"2013-02-02T14:28:56","slug":"two-ways-to-make-a-spoon-3d-printing-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/10043-two-ways-to-make-a-spoon-3d-printing-in-action.html","title":{"rendered":"Two ways to make a spoon: 3D printing in action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I attended the Monki Gras<\/a>, a distinctive event exploring how to scale craft, mainly in the context of technology but also in the context of beer.<\/p>\n

On the second day there was a light-hearted competition. Who can make a spoon faster, a wood carver, or a geek with a 3D printer?<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A skilled craftsperson can make a spoon in around half an hour, we learned.<\/p>\n

In the other corner was a techie, a laptop computer and a 3D printer.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Said techie (I did not get the name unfortunately) had downloaded a spoon design from the internet and was printing it on a Prusa Mendal RepRap<\/a> machine. Cost: from a few hundred pounds if you self-assemble, or \u00a31000 or more if you purchase complete.<\/p>\n

The software is open source: slic3r<\/a> to convert a 3D model into printing instructions, and pronterface<\/a> to talk to the 3D printer.<\/p>\n

Looking in more detail at the printer, what you have is a system of cogs, rails and stepper motors that lets a print head move in three dimensions. The raw material is a spool of green plastic from faberdashery<\/a>. This could be fed from the rotating white spooler at the top of the machine, though in this case only a little was needed and it was floating loose.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The plastic is melted by the print head and squirted out to form the object being printed. Apparently once formed it is reasonably rigid and strong.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Attendees observed that the competition was pretty silly, since speed is not a goal of 3D printing (and the wood carver was indeed the victor). In that sense, 3D printing is a poor way of scaling craft, though it has some potential in that a brilliant design can be reproduced as an object many times over. If you want a lot though, it is worth investing in traditional plastic moulding: setup is expensive, but once you have done one, you can do thousands more cheaply.<\/p>\n

Still, imagine what 3D printing enables. I have a nice set of headphones, for example, which are useless because a small plastic component has broken. If I can get hold of (or make) a 3D computer model of the part, I can now make that part for little cost. You do not even need your own 3D printer; services like Shapeways<\/a> let you upload the design and get the part in the post a few days later.<\/p>\n

In niche areas like model trains and landscapes, 3D printing makes models viable even if only a few are needed. You can also have exactly the size you want, rather than being restricted to the standard sizes that are volume manufactured.<\/p>\n

For inventors, 3D printing makes prototyping easier. You can iterate through hundreds of slightly different designs and try them out physically, rather than relying on computer models.<\/p>\n

The opportunities are fantastic, and you can get started for little cost; though the guy at Monki Gras did note that his RepRap was temperamental and therefore a high maintenance gadget. Maybe by making a few modified parts he can improve it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I attended the Monki Gras, a distinctive event exploring how to scale craft, mainly in the context of technology but also in the context of beer. On the second day there was a light-hearted competition. Who can make a spoon faster, a wood carver, or a geek with a 3D printer? A skilled … Continue reading Two ways to make a spoon: 3D printing in action<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142],"tags":[109,606,1415],"class_list":["post-10043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets","tag-3d-printing","tag-monkigras","tag-reprap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}