THE best scratchbuilding tool EVER

[Dublinguy]

Originally Posted by jay@af

Yeah, but....

It uses a "LASER"!!

sorry that actually made me laugh out loud in the office...Im getting some funny looks now.

I am one of the "rest" that Ray is talking about, I know nothing about engineering it does beg the question as Rallyraider stated is it really scratchbuild if it was feasible to use one of these machines, I dont believe it is.

[DSM-Mark]

At $10K, I think only Hiroboy can afford it....


RP'ing is still very limited. So far, it can only create things in plastic, and converting something from a plastic master to a metal part is very, very difficult. That is why it is used for 'Prototyping'.

One of the coolest things I've made with RPing is a 'solid' appearing object with a honeycomb structure inside, greatly reducing volume of material required.

[bvia]

In the late ;80's, GM (and thier sub-contractors, i.e. Lotus) used a type of sheet paper based RP system, where in the printer cut a layer of paper and those were glued together (using the printer sheet's number reference) to create "solid body" masters for the Z-R1 32 valve engine...

[SchuberT]

Originally Posted by GTmike400

Another version of rapid prototyping is like CNC printing. It starts at the bottom and sprays on a new layer plastic each pass, much like a printer except its a 3 axis, not two, and uses plastic as ink. Even though the parts are plastic/polystyrene/thylene/urethane/etc they are incredibly strong...and expensive.

Yes, this is what I was talking about Thanks for rephrasing.