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I mean, I agree that such a kit would be hugely popular and useful. You just don't understand how hard the problem is. There's a reason that people pay thousand
by aeturnum 4y ago
I mean, I agree that such a kit would be hugely popular and useful. You just don't understand how hard the problem is. There's a reason that people pay thousands of dollars for twenty year old hardware.
> I would be somewhat surprised if at least an attempt at such a kit didn't already exist.
Oh there are lots of attempts!
- derefr 4y agoDo you expect that an existing mid-tier consumer 3D printer company could make such a kit (with sufficient quality to be useful) as a byproduct of their 3D-printer production line — the same way that iRobot makes "robotics platforms" that are just Roomba vacuums, minus the vacuum mechanism, plus an SDK? If so, would it be a good idea to go bug one of the 3D printer companies — most likely, one of the ones that frequently pumps out new models to address the problems customers complained about in previous models — to try doing this?
- aeturnum 4y agoI don't think so. The problem is that you have a... thick 160μm plane (the 'target') that you need to orient exactly along another plane some distance away. You are going to need to mount things on the target and move them through with good speed and precision. Every link in the chain has the potential to throw off the alignment. Traditionally this is solved through a centralized manufacturing process where one group of people get really good at building (and maintaining) the devices such that they generally line things up reliably (i.e. a company making a scanner). It's kind of like P=NP for manufacturing I guess? If you can really figure out how to instruct a random person to get an above-average scan out of their DSLR, you can instruct them to make almost anything.