CNN came to our office to do a story on rapid prototyping for architects: http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2010/06/28/t_tt_3d_printing.cnnmoney/
Spyker Auto and their airplane props are so strange, and now a factory to match!! Here is one of the better printers I have found. They have two choices depending on how much you want to spend. Quality is amazing. I have done model parts that are several milimeters long with perfect detail. http://www.printapart.com/ Tom Tanner/Scale Designs/Ferrari Expo 2011-Chicago April 2011
Rijk, Kudos on a nice video. Looks like you're working on some fun projects. Good for you!! Daryl Adams
Great demonstration and nice to see Rijk's shop. I thought 3D BIM modeling was a big deal, not anymore.
Scott, We are constantly busy with finding the limits of the machine. It is not as simple as building a sketchup model, and send it to your printer. Simple, small volumes, are easy to do, but complex spatial shapes needs a lot of expertise. We have several Rapid Prototyping companies visit us to see how we are getting these finely detailed models.
You do nice work, but you have to build the up the large complex shapes with smaller small volume parts anyway. I thought this was more about 3D printing in general. When it comes to 3D printing the smaller the detail the harder it is for the 3D printer to duplicate. Most can't even do the high definition detail parts I want. I brought up Printapart because they have some of the latest highend printers available for very high quality parts. TT
Tell me about it...About ten years ago, I tried doing some ""parametric" (basically from scratch) onscreen 3D object modeling with ArchiCAD. It's been awhile, but I think I built up a refrigerator before calling it quits.
We did a lot of research before we selected the Objet Eden series. The Printapart had a resolution of 600 DPI, while the Eden has 1600 DPI (16 microns) as layer thickness.
