Post by plutronus on Dec 26, 2018 23:16:35 GMT -6
About two years ago, I began the journey toward homebrewing a personal 3D printer, eg, make a 3D printer from scratch, simply to learn a bit about the technology. I try to keep abreast of new emergent significant technology.
I had posted a few 'articles' regarding my 3D printing info finds from around the 'Net, and then had begun to print a 'blog' style thread, consisting of recurring posts of my journey as it progressed, but, again, alas, a moderator censored one of my 3D print articles, deleting it without comment or reason why. It happened, apparently as did not like something I wrote, which is the reason I stopped posting here for a really long period of time and I never updated my 3D printer learning journey.
Since then I have hacked together a Kossel style 3 arm 'delta' 3D printer. If this board allowed photo uploads I'd be happy to share the process of how that printer came into physical existence. The process involved a significant learning curve, which to me was quite surprising regarding the difficulty of it all. I am a long-term electronics design engineer as well as a software programmer, and I have to my credit having written very large commercial grade software programs. Much of my hardware and software engineering has been in the US Military engineering domain. I have also engineered, some really kewl military robots. Whether you take my word for it or not, robots will kill you and the next major world-war will be robotic. Those robots will be devoid of mercy and robots terrify me more than the idea of becomming a blast shadow in stone caused by a nuclear flash...
In Europe, robots have legally been identified as being 'electronic persons' so that they can be held responsible for illegal activity. I can prove that, as I photographed my TV screen depicting the Eurpean Union's declaration. Its amazing and terrifying all at that same time.
Ad rem, so 3D printing is in its infancy. Its my opinion that personal-3D printing technical evolution is roughly akin to where the personal-computers were technically around 1976ish? They print, they can print useful things, but are mostly just printing shelf-ware, ie, decorative vases, there are hundreds of little boats, ships, gnomes, fairies, dragons, etc type articles being printed by all sorts of folks, young and old.
In the consumer 3D printing market one can buy fully engineered, fully assembled, very easy to calibrate and to operate 3D printers. There are bunches of those type printers available, starting at aroun $150. Its all about size. The bigger the more expensive, and then there is the matter of speed!
In my next post, I'll go into what's available and where one may acquire these ubiquitous gadgets which are affordable by just about everyone.
Cheers
plutronus