A Note About 3-D Printing and Manufacturing Processes
Spools of plastic filament at the library!
My library network recently acquired a few 3-D printers, and as has been the case since the first desktop DIY models hit the market, there have been a lot of public misperceptions about their capabilities. I hope to remedy that to some small extent here.
3-D printing is a rapid prototyping process, and ill-suited to most finished product applications. It's not an efficient or effective manufacturing process 99.999% the time. Whenever any product is being designed, itnis necessary to consider the materials and manufacturing processes available and calculate the costs and benefits of each. These can vary according to the scale of the project, the end use considerations, and more.
Suppose I want to make a kitchen mixing bowl. There are four common materials to consider: ceramics, glass, metals, and plastics. Ceramics are one of the oldest materials known to mankind, but my town has a potter in business even today. Pyrex glass in particular is durable and oven-safe, but large bowls are not really lighter than ceramics. Metal mixing bowls are light for their size compared the previous two options, and quite sturdy. Plastics can be lighter than metal, but have limitations on durability and strength.
Metal bowls are typically made by spin forming sheet stock. It would be incredibly costly to mill a 12"/30 cm. diameter bowl from a block of steel. However, milling a mold for plastic injection molding in mass production could be worth the initial expense. But odds are, vacuum forming would be the best mass production method for our hypothetical plastic bowl. 3-D printing would be costly for a machine that could make a 12" bowl, and very slow to manufacture as well.
On the other hand, 3-D printing can be ideal if you wanted to make something like a specialty measuring cup in a given volume or with an artistic embellishment. It's something you would probably only make once, and the time and expense per piece is far less than it would take to tool up factory production for a one-off design study. And the versatility of a 3-D printer means it can do many different things with minimal setup time. Print the measuring cup. Print a toy. Print a bracket for a computer component. Print an AR-15 lower. Print an abstract design just for the heck of it. All at the press of a button, essentially. That is the true strength of 3-D printing. Know its limitations and its advantages going in, and your results will be far better.
Lol, I like how you slipped the AR-15 lower in there.
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Unfortunately, I can't slip the lower into the library print queue.
You should see if you can print a block with the words "AR-15 Lower" imprinted on it. That way you could say that you printed an AR-15 lower at the local library.
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I could probably get away with printing a custom grip I designed for a friend. It's for Airsoft!
wink
One of the library district managers panicked over an action figure gun a couple inches long though, so there's no telling what might "trigger" the hoplophobes. Fortunately, our tech outreach manager overruled the paranoia.
That's crazy.
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@jacobtothe no disrespect but why does a library need a 3D printer?
Printing Braille pages. ;)
@dullhawk that never entered my mind, what a good thing to do with it.
Libraries are often places for the less privileged to have access to computing and other tech that might have public interest but are not necessarily accessible to the poor.
Also, a 3D printer can be an outreach to draw in the community.
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@loreshapergames yes they are. Before the internet, we went to the library often, they had a collection of movies we could check out for free. Besides the books to read. I have a better outlook on the 3-D printer.
People still borrow DVDs all the time. We only phased out VHS a couple years ago, because those were still circulating a lot, especially for kids.
@jacotothe I still have a VCR and lots of VHS tapes.
The bigwigs want to make it a library of technology as well as books. We charge for filament use like we charge for prints/copies to cover paper and ink.
@jacobtothe I get it now, they let the public build things, for a price.
Never thought a library would have one. It’s always interesting to see how you guys adapt over time. I wonder what other interesting things they have that the public does not tend to know about. Very cool.
I've never used a 3-D printer myself just never had the need. I do love the thought of just needing a file and you could print something out that you created.
One of the libraries has some kind of electrical safety or efficiency analyzer. I don't recall the details, but it was one of the odd things delivered on request through our library courier once or twice in the past. There has also been talk of setting up at least an event for a "repair cafe" where people can access various tools and community volunteer experts to fix stuff. It might even pull in some of the older gentlemen of the community with odd tools and skills to help out. Nothing has happened there yet though.
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