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Design for 3D-Printing

(blog.rahix.de)
837 points q3k | 1 comments | 04 May 25 17:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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no_wizard ◴[04 May 25 18:51 UTC] No.43888612[source]▶
I always thought 3D printing would make multi widget machine[0] manufacturing possible

While it’s done a lot of cool stuff and enabled rapid prototyping etc it never scaled the way I really thought it would

[0]: there may be a better turn for this however this is what I mean: that is one machine that can output a wide variety of different things using the same common material, IE maybe one day it produces ball bearings and the next it could produce a bunch of car pistons, with only having to make minimal changes to the machine itself if not changing anything at all

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1. al_borland ◴[04 May 25 19:24 UTC] No.43888858[source]▶
There are companies with big print farms that offer this service. But of course it’s limited to materials that can be 3D printed, and if the product reaches a certain scale, it’s likely best to invest in injection molding or some other process.

That said, for smaller scale products, news businesses, or things where 3D printing is the only way the thing can exist, these services exist.