A machine capable of printing small bicycle components has gone on sale for £847. Reminiscent of the ‘replicator’, a machine in the fictional television series Star Trek that was capable of instantly creating almost anything from scratch, the Thing-O-Matic 3-D printer builds up objects using layers of the same plastic used to manufacture Lego.
3-D printers are not new, but until now they have cost tens of thousands of pounds. The Thing-O-Matic is cheaper to buy because it made from off-the-shelf components and supplied as a kit, which claim its designers, is as easy to build as IKEA self-assembly furniture.
Other than the limitations of size (12.5×12.5×12.5cm) and material (ABS plastic, the Thing-O-Matic will print any object that can be designed on a computer.
What can cyclists make?
Cycling-related objects already manufactured by owners of the Thing-O-Matic include the iPhone mounts pictured right.
It is expected that 3-D home printers will within five years be capable of producing every component required to manufacture the iphone itself, with the exception of the microchip.
The website Thingiverse already hosts over 5,000 designs for objects that can be downloaded for free.
A British company, Robosavvy, sells the Thing-O-Matic kit for £847.
See the Thing-o-Matic in action
| 3-D printing – “democratised manufacturing” | |
|---|---|
| Bre Pettis, co-founder and chief executive of MakerBot, said; “As with the realised ambition of Bill Gates, who famously said he wanted to put a computer in every home in the world, all of us will eventually own a 3D printer. If we were engineers, this thing would cost 100 times as much. But our goal is to democratise manufacturing so anyone can have a machine that makes anything they need. We want to render consumerism useless – and that doesn’t work if the machine isn’t cheap.” |
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