Club buy?

[moosetestbestanden]

So, I was thinking (yikes!)... 3D printers are getting cheaper and cheaper, and there's lots of little things that could be formed out of high temp. plastics.

Club buy? Magnus? Doug? Sean? Et. Al?

[Sean]

Usually cheaper to farm it out. Also, FYI - they make 3D printers now that make titanium parts! These cost a little more than the plastic ones, though.

[Doug Liedblad]

The 3d printed parts in plastic aren't very strong.

Generally used for development before injection molding.

[slomove]

We have two such machines in the company, an older FDM type (fused deposition modeling) that I also used to make my headlight pods for the Hella modules. As Doug mentions the strength is moderate and due to the layered structure it comes out like plywood. We also have a newer one using liquid acrylics which is a little better.

For both machines the raw material is not cheap, especially for bigger parts and the finish is a bit rough but once a while it is convenient. However, the wish to make (almost) any desired part from plastic, wood or aluminum was behind my build project for the CNC router/mill. E.g. one of the things in the pipeline (probably next year) is an airbox to replace the ITG filter. But first I need to fix the crumpled rear panel and my motivation for that is pretty low.