Anyone been playing with a Makerbot for cockpit building?

[AK Mongo]

Just ran across an article on a diy 3d plastic printer called Makerbot. Has anyone tried one of these? The possibilities look pretty fantastic!

http://www.makerbot.com/

Reid

[Wendy]

Followed a demonstration to see this in action. In my humble opinion there is nothing you could do with this. It melds a wire of plastic and drops it on the model like a CNC. The results are far from fantastic.

Look at a few examples in the following link so you can see what I mean:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/04/makerbot_cnc_makes_cupcakes_bunnies.html

Regards, Wendy

[ANDYSMITH]

Hello, that is a very bad example of this technology. You need to spend some money to get the precision required to get good parts.
Here is a page of good samples.

http://3drp.com/gallery.html

Andy

[Wendy]

hey Andy,

The examples in your link are made with a different technology (Z-printer) and not with a Markerbot. There is no way a marketbot can make this high quality models.

Regards, Wendy

[ANDYSMITH]

Hi Wendy, yes that is what I was getting at.

I have a Actua 2100 rapid prototype machine that I got off ebay for $6000. I should leave California today or tomorrow and be here in Seattle next week. I can't wait to play around with it!!! It uses a powdered plastic and has +/- .010" resolution. I am hoping with fingers crossed that I can make some usable parts, like throttle knobs and such. I have a co-worker that has used them for medical prototyping. He says that you can make the parts a little oversized and sand them down smooth and use them if the material is strength meets the need.

If I get good results I will post pictures.

Andy