Z Corp's 3D printers available to Hawaiian school students, the wealthy

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.

[MaxSMoke777 Posted May 5th 2009 2:18AM]

Shapeways.com will print out whatever you like, assuming you have a few bucks and are willing to wait 2 weeks for it to arrive. I've printed out many of my 3D model using their service. They use the really high end machines, so the results are detailed and smooth. Until the day comes that I can get my own $5000, flawless 3D printer, I'll probably stick with them. Here's their site:

http://www.shapeways.com

This is my Flickr page, which has many pictures of stuff I made using their services:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/82233338@N00

[razorhawk9 Posted May 5th 2009 9:51AM]

These Z-Corp printers are serious POS's, seriously! I have used them before and they are a tremendous mess to use and it is literally impossible to create a model as they show you in pictures and when they come to deliver a sales pitch. It is all a bunch of lies!!! Beware! It is cheap, but the 3D models are useless, as they come out of the machine warped and break apart into peices during the process of removing them from the machine. The excess powder has to be blown off, which does not work very well. Then you have to use a hardner such as super glue to harden the model so it does not break any furuther. This causes much more warpage and you end up glueing your hands together. Use gloves you say? The special super glue from z-corp has an affinity for melting through the gloves.

[MeesterJ Posted May 5th 2009 1:06PM]

AutoCAD? Dude, AutoCAD is totally bending over to SolidWorks. Try SolidWorks instead.