Z Corp's 3D printers available to Hawaiian school students, the wealthy
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted May 4th 2009 2:31PM
posted May 4th 2009 2:31PM
We're eagerly awaiting the day when 3D printers achieve the same sort of ubiquity as their two dimensional brethren -- we can only imagine the sweet office pranks that will become available once we can conjure tiny objects from our imaginations (via AutoCAD). It looks like the fine folks over at Hawaii's State Department of Education have more civic-minded uses for the machine, however. As high school students from throughout the islands complete their 3D design projects they send the files to the education office in Honolulu, which manufactures physical models with a Z Corporation 3D printer and ships them back to the students, who can then review the model and refine their design. A machine like Z Corp's ZPrinter 310 Plus (seen above) will run you a cool $19,900 before shipping, sales tax, and so forth, so it looks like all of you amateur CADsters out there might want to find a pen-pal in the Pineapple State if you want to make your ID dreams a reality. Either that or do it yourself. And make sure you send us the YouTube link when you do.
If I had this machine, I'd so make a model of my face... just because I can.
This sounds easy but it is really hard and/or expensive. The printing is easy but scanning-in your face and converting it to a usable STL file is a real pain.
You can easily build a 3d scanner for about $30
http://www.david-laserscanner.com/
Thats cool but my high school had one of these in our CAD lab, that we could use whenever we wanted, that was in Washington too!
I'd make a mold of my ass and tell my nosy supervisor to kiss it.
let me know when we can print beer
milk printers would be better.
All hail the 404 :-).
The place I used to work had a 3d printer, and it was AWESOME!
Really! Then why did you quit?
I have absolutely no real use for one of these, yet I want one badly. Oh, the things I could create to sit on my desk. Hours of entertainment.
i would print out porn
pffftt... I will print out the internetz
pffft...I'd print out a happy place
I believe my high school has one...too bad I graduated a while ago...
Then again, there was a case of swine flu there, so maybe its not such a bad thing...
are these the 3d printers made by those guys from dublin?
it'd be cool to get one of these..
THIS IS SOO COOL!! this should DEF be tomorrows recessionary note haha PLEASE ENGADGET!!!
No thanks, there's enough tension in studio trying to finish models on your own the night before crits. I'd hate to be the one sitting infront of a review pannel at 10:05 trying to explain to a bunch of profs that FedEx didnt live up to their delivery by 10 am promise.
Who uses AudoCAD? Architects maybe? The majority of 3D design is done on Pro/Engineer, CATIA, Solidworks, or Unigraphics. For 3D modeling AutoCAD is a toy imho but then again I've got well over 20k hours on Pro and 2k on AutoCAD.
We've had a $20k 3D printer in the office for like 10 years. It is pretty crappy compared to the $100k+ machines and used more for concept like stuff. We also have 2 $250k SLS machines and a $200k SLA that make corp look like junk. You get what you pay for I guess.
There is a company out there working on a $2000 machine but I can't remember the name. I'll post it later if I find a link.
I would say most use SolidWorks. Engineering wise it's highly preferred for its usability.
ACAD is garbage. Autodesk's Inventor is a decent beginner parametric modeling program, but Solidworks is king when it comes to industry. Pro, Catia etc are technologically superior, but when trying to deal with other companies, Solidworks has the advantage.
You would say most use Solidworks but you would be wrong. Most use Pro/Engineer by number of licenses. If you are a small company I would go Solidworks personally but it still has problems with very large assemblies and I can't think of one large company using it.
These are them but it looks like they are in a rocky financial state.
http://www.desktopfactory.com/
We have one of these in the office
http://www.dimensionprinting.com/3d-printers/3d-printing-bst.aspx
these guys have a kit you can order.
http://store02.prostores.com/servlet/kobask8/Detail?no=34
Pffft. None of them compare to Google Sketchup. Not at all :p
Yeah. In some places though it is institutional. I got my degree in biological engineering and even to this day they still teach the freshmen using AutoCAD. The university has licenses for Solidworks and its loaded on every computer along side AutoCAD and Inventor and I've played with it before. Solidworks looks impressive and I think it would be worth the time to learn how to use it, but the faculty at my old department just flat out refuses to teach anything else. I remember the dept. head telling me in my exit interview that it was just not practical to start of with SW and that AutoCAD gave students a much easier transition into using CAD programs. Translation - We don't want to learn something new.
I'm an architecture student and we use autocad but only for 2d drawings, anything three dimensional is done in Rhinoceros or Maya. We have a few 3d printers and they are really great for making models that could never be made by hand but it is terribly expensive. A little model like the last one I did was 8"x5"x5", and it cost nearly $300 for material alone. I can't imagine what those models in the picture cost
bragster
@revolution6, either you were using a really expensive material or you got seriously ripped off. If you make them hollow you save a ton. Next time just use a site like http://www.shapeways.com/ to print it. Much cheaper (still pretty expensive for larger objects, but no where near 300).
Here for the AutoCAD hatred. Useless.
This is what we do all the time.
The systems are cool to use.
We're even using the printer shown in the original post, though I doubt that printer did the work shown to the right because it's build chamber is 8 X 8 X 10 Inches.
Um I am pretty sure they built the buildings in layers...
I would give my left arm for this, which I would then use to make a new left arm.
My dads work has one of these. He tells me they are pretty awesome and the one they have is almost always on.
I don't get what's so special about this. My high school in Michigan had 3D printers for our CAD classes to print AutoCAD projects out 5 years ago. They printed smaller items than skyscraper models, but it was 5 years ago.
3-d Printer? Man, that file cabinet would be HUGE!
Actually, when my younger brother was a senior in high school, his drafting class was able to send designs to OSU (Oregon State University) to be printed, but the teacher recently got a grant for the high school to get their own 3D printer. It was $25,000 grant... Yeah... jealous much?
We had a 3D printer at the Art Institute of Philadelphia. http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/4488/shippageright.jpg
"PC LOAD LETTER" ooozaahh
How is this different or better than the more affordable uPrint™ Personal 3D Printer for $5K cheaper?
Clocks in at $15K. From http://www.dimensionprinting.com/
C'mon Engadget. If you're going to talk about how affordable something is, please try to do a better job of selecting something that qualifies as "affordable". Especially when there is a competing product available for 25% less (or costs 33% more than the competition, depending on how you look at it).
Anyone know how these two 3D printers stack up against each other? What do you get for the $5K and is it worth it?
The zcorp printer prints larger parts and at a higher resolution than the uPrint. The uPrint can only print in the color white, while the zcorp printer can print in whatever color the material you use is. I believe the uPrint can only use a proprietary abs plastic material (you'll have to buy it from them, and it's probably not cheap). You end up having more freedom with the more expensive printer.
Just to mention it: there are at least two good open-source 3D printer projects
(and good implies these work, in contrast to the "do it yourself" link in the post).
(1) RepRap at http://www.reprap.org
(2) Fab@Home at http://128.253.249.235/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
I've just recently (last week actually) completed a fab@home kit and I'm just waiting for my order for the materials to come so that I can print off a few parts. I would recommend the rep rap though because it's cheaper and has the ability to produce replicate parts used to make another rep rap. If you did that, then you and a friend could chip in for one rep rap, and then print off parts for another rep rap.
Yeah, they should've gone with RepRaps. It would've cost more to put one in every public high school in Hawaii (43*€500 is about $30K); but they'd be teaching a better lesson.
I run one of the ZCorp 510 machines at work. Awesome stuff. Even when you use it alot, it still just amazes. Best thing, IMO, is that it "prints" 3D in color.
It's actually extremely easy to use, and relatively cheap.
I'm guessing the only improvement on this will be holodecks and replicators.
We have a Dimension Elite 3D printer (which ran $30,000) that prints off Solidworks jobs. It can take a few hours to print out a job that's the size of your fist, but man it's awesome to watch.
All well and good having the 3D printers [I agree they are supercool and would love to have one], but I would say the money would be better spent teaching these kids how to design properly, judging by what is produced!
Thanks for the business, Z Corp!
This is pretty low tech actually. Stereolithography is the best right now.
I want this to print actual text books.
SLA is the best?
don't be obtuse, different processes are more appropriate than others for different tasks.
my school (DAAP, university of cincinnati) has a couple of 3d printers, an SLA, a couple of laser cutters and so many milling machines. i love them all for different reasons.
where's the alias love in here? did all the car guys already get shit-canned and have their utilities shut off?
If you want to go the DIY route, http://www.makerbot.com/ is pretty rad.
Compared to a standard plotter used in most Architectural offices, this really isn't prohibitively expensive (bad economy for Architects aside...)