Blog fabLAb
3D Printing: It's the future! (Well... it's really the past)
Auto replication: printing a part for a new printer
When we show the 3D printers at the fabLAB to those who visit us, it’s common to hear expressions like the one that gives the title to this post: “It’s a revolution!”, “This is the future!”, “Of course!, in a few years we are all going to have one at home, right?”.
Depending on how much time we have for the visit and the nature of it, we explain that this is not exactly like that, first, 1990 it’s not the future, it’s the past, and we should remember that 1990 was not 10 years ago, it’s more like a quarter of a century ago, the year the company Stratasys started to sell their first FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) printers, which is the technology used by all printers here at fabLAB Asturias, both the Makerbot Thing-O-Matic and all the RepRap project printers.
The key to understand what’s really happening with 3D printing is on the patents. S. Scott Crump patented FDM technology back in 1989, and when did MakerBot start their activity? Exactly 20 years later, what a coincidence! That's the precise moment when everyone could freely design and [...]
