Reading Geek Night 20 schedule

Unscheduled

• All You Ever Wanted To Know About 3D Printing But Were Afraid To Ask

  by Malcolm Napier

  There's been a lot of publicity recently about 3-d printing. This leader and article from a recent (10 Feb 2011) edition of The Economist are pretty emphatic endorsements of the technology.

  However, what should one make of the demonstration on ITV's This Morning on April 11? It is not ridiculous but certainly a little unsettling.

  For those of us who like our technology raw, there are open source 3-d printing projects that seek to empower geeks, hackers and makers by enabling them to build low cost 3-d printers out of little more than some perspex, nuts and bolts and steel rod. Oh.. and not forgetting the stepper motors, electronics, firmware and the bit that gets hot enough to melt the plastic and possibly burn the house down (just joking....)

  But how easy is it to get one of these home-brew devices to work?

  Malcolm believes that he and his daughter Hannah have built the first working RepStrap 3-d printer in the Thames Valley and hope to have a working RepRap machine to demonstrate on the night.

  So if you need to know the difference between a RepStrap and a RepRap or between ABS and PLA, or maybe just watch some tech go up in flames, then this talk is for you.

  • 3D Printing
  • MakerBot
  • RepRap