Amazing tech?

Real tech or April 1?

Definitely Lirpa Loof Inc.

1. The scanned image did not include the chemistry-set clamp that was holding the part.

1. How could you make a working wrench, when the scanner is only scanning the outside and not the internal workings?

A clever spoof because it touches on several technologues that are up and coming.

There was a company demonstrating this technology at the Model Engineering Exhibition at Ally Pally this year. The clue is in the use of two types of plastic, one of which is soluble. The finished model, build using the two types of plastic is washed out leaving just the working model. This will only work with CAD drawings not scanned image.

Typical artistic licence from a TV advert.

Real tech or April 1?

> Real tech or April 1?

If it's meant as a spoof it's a particularly poor one - 3D scanners and printers can do all the things they showed, and more. Maybe not as fast'n'easy as they showed, but that's just US tv - they won't show something which takes a couple of minutes, like doing an entire scan. it might cause viewer attention to wane.

BTW there are a couple of things about the tech they didn't quite get - first, when printing the wrench, I imagine they took it to pieces and scanned the bits, then told the computer to reassemble them.

But you can do more, you can tell the computer to assemble parts which pass through each other when being assembled, like chinese ivory puzzle balls but more so, things which could never be assembled in the real world. And then build them in the assembled state.

You can also print directly in stainless, brass, bronze, and other metals, rather than plastic. Usually the parts comes out like sintered, but you can also fill the holes in the sinter to make much stronger objects. I think there's one combination which has a yield strength of

70,000 psi, that's in the high tensile steel range.

-- Peter Fairbrother

Real tech or April 1?

--Seen today on hackaday here's a link to another one you can build:

--Most of the folks who are building their own seem to be making Repraps tho, as it's designed in such a way that it can reproduce a goodly portion of itself. more on reprap here: