Someone just sent me this amazing video of a 3D printer copying a crescent wrench – moving parts and all. The company featured, Z-Corp, is a Stat-Ease client. See this case study showing how their engineers used response surface methods (RSM) to discover a small window of operability.
Another client of Stat-Ease, Stratasys, also offers rapid-prototyping machines, but they make use of another technology called fused deposition modeling (FDM) – explained nicely by this schematic from Ferris State University. I’ve seen these machines at work. They run from plastic line similar to what’s used in a weed whacker. Based on a computerized blueprint, this material (suitable for functional parts, not just prototypes) is melted layer-by-layer into complex shapes. Check out this full-scale turboprop engine produced by FDM.
The next step will be the development of machines that can make whatever you need out of whatever you happen to have nearby that can be shoveled in the hopper. Then people who really want to get away from the crowds can rocket off to any old unoccupied planetismal and set themselves up with house and home.
“It’s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material – rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids – process them inside and produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.”
– Physicist Theodore Taylor (1978)