4 ms·

I was not aware of that. How depressing. Still, I think some of my point can still be salvaged - this implies that it was patented in the early 80s, which by m

• spacemark 7y ago
  Possible, yes. Economically viable for the vast majority of applications, no. In undergrad in 2001 I had a professor that had a 3D printed airplane model with a wingspan of ~5" that he thought was so damn cool (it was some now-defunct military airplane he helped design or something). He was also very fond of pointing out that the model cost his former employer $500 to print, so we better handle it with care. And rightfully so, because if we treated it like a toy it would have fallen apart in under a semester. Compared to what I print today using my MK3s for, I dunno, 50 cents, his $500 printed airplane was a piece of crap. Point is there have been a lot of technological advances, patents aside, that have made 3D printers viable for anything outside of extremely high-value rapid prototyping / mold forming / other narrow niche applications in the last 20 years.