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This is incredible! star trek stuff--worth the time to watch video

Everytime I see one of these videos I am amazed. First time I saw one was on Leno. He has one in his shop to make replicas of old car parts that he can take to real machine shops to duplicate into steel, etc.
 
A buddy of mine took me to see them in operation a couple years ago while I was in Daytona Beach, they are frick'n awesome . Down side is that it takes forever to print things out.
 
While the "Scan and print a crescent wrench" demo is cool, it's important to point out that there is a LOT of CAD work to go from "scanned tool" to "functional tool." The scanner just gets the shape, but doesn't inherently understand how the thumbwheel works, or how the parts slide across each other, or the teeth on the rack that actuates the tool. All that info has to be given to the computer first, and that's a laborious process that they don't really show here.

Solid tools (hammer, screwdriver, etc) would indeed come out of the machine "functional" (though weak due to the material) but complex tools must be "understood" by the machine.

THe cool thing is, though, once you have the file for it, producing duplicates is a snap. I *THINK* there's a very interesting home business you could come up with for these, but I haven't figured out exactly what.

Unless I went with the Jessica Alba Idea.
 
We have one of these at work. Yes, you need to send it a drawing that is generated in a CAD program. We don't have the scanner.

I need to spend some time fiddling with that printer.....
 
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