Scientific American: five 3D printers

Last month, the open source 3D printer RepRap made the first successful copy of itself. And it's not the only 3D printer technology emerging from the workshops of ingenious makers. Over at SciAm.com, JR Minkel posts a slideshow of five machines to "print" 3D objects, including the RepRap, Fab@Home, and, seen here, the amazing Candy Fab from Evil Mad Scientist Labs. The Candy Fab prints objects by fusing layers of sugar. 3D Printers

Previously on BB:
• RepRap universal constructor achieves self-replication
• Build a fabricator at home
• 3D printing comes to Sears

• [twig]

  Ok, awesome.

  Candy Fab seems like it would have near-unlimited potential.

• [semiotix]

  Meh. Wake me when they have 4D printers. I’ve got this cool idea for a tesseract paperweight.

• [eustace]

  I have access to a knee mill, lathe, bandsaws, tooling etc. at work. So what am I going to build? A reprap, of course (the arduino version).

  And once I have it – Custom Lego!!!

• [Takuan]

  http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-to-Build-Desk-Top-3-Axis-CNC-Milling-Machine/

• [Zan]

  I wish they would stop with this “self-replicating” baloney. RepRap didn’t even come close to self replicating — it created the plastic braces needed to hold all the metal parts, motors, and electronics together on another RepRap. It wasn’t even close to 50% of the needed parts, and MUCH assembly was required. If you’re going by that definition, machine tools such as mills and lathes have been self-replicating for a hundred years.

• [Agent 86]

  Heh, I watch a confectionery competition on the food network, where they make the most intricate sugar towers, and I always despair at the time and effort required… but this Candy Fab thing looks like it’ll do exactly what I want.

• [minTphresh]

  DNA spiral candy? sign me up!

• [pelrun]

  I wish people would stop bitching about Reprap’s “self-replication” moniker. Nobody said it implies “self-assembly”. Nobody said it was the absolute first thing to ever do it.

  It’s a machine that has reached the goal of making the custom parts required for a second copy of itself. That’s all the reprap people mean when they say “self-replicating”.

• [Modusoperandi]

  The Candy Fab prints objects by fusing layers of sugar

  Also, it has a disturbingly high number of users that resemble Augustus Gloop.

• [eustace]

  That’s a great instructable, Takuan.

• [Takuan]

  they’ve got a bunch of CNC machines of varying difficulty.

• [Antinous]

  Nobody said it implies “self-assembly”.

  Yeah, don’t you know that humans aren’t self replicating because our young are not fully functional at birth? Clearly, nature didn’t read The Rules.

• [Takuan]

  just as well they can’t eat unaided for a while.