The UPS Store Will 3-D Print Stuff For You 144
mpicpp writes with news that UPS will be expanding their 3D printing services. UPS announced plans Monday to bring in-store 3-D-printing services to nearly 100 stores across the country, billing itself as the first national retailer to do so. With the UPS system, customers can submit their own designs for objects like product prototypes, engineering parts and architectural models that are then printed on a professional-quality 3-D printer made by Stratasys. Prices vary depending on the complexity of the object; an iPhone case would be about $60, while a replica femur bone would be around $325. UPS can also connect customers with outside professionals who charge an hourly rate to help produce a design file for the printer. It generally takes about four or five hours to print a simple object, with more complex items taking a day or more. The program started as a pilot at six locations last year, and UPS says those stores "saw demand for 3-D print continuing to increase across a broad spectrum of customers."
Competition (Score:4, Funny)
Will they print me up a FedEx truck?
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Don't copy that jalopy!
Re:Competition (Score:4, Funny)
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Included for free with the goons they hire to deliver the packages.
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Will they print me up a FedEx truck?
Yes, but what will they deliver it in?
So in the future ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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until people start ordering "objectionable" items.
Re:So in the future ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, injection molding is always going to be cheaper for mass produced stuff, shipping inclusive.
Or do you think there will be a day you can 3D print a plastic chair that can support a person for $5?
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You missed the point completely. You can either 3D print a chair for $200+ or go to the nearest hardware store and buy one for $5. The reason being that the chair bought from the hardware store was mass produced using injection moulding and shipped close to you for minimal costs.
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Or do you think there will be a day you can 3D print a plastic chair that can support a person for $5?
Do you think 3D printing will always be limited to weak materials?
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Re:So in the future ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd imagine NASA made that with laser sintering, which produces parts at highway robbery prices.
That said, I think you're being a bit overly pessimistic. 3d printing is rapid prototyping. Rapid prototyping is not mass production, but it's an incredibly useful thing in its own right. And some things are only ever needed in low volumes, mass production will never apply to them. Most consumers only think of consumer goods, but it's industry for which 3d printing can really shine. For consumers, it's really only useful for custom goods - not "white plastic chair", but "snow globe containing scuptures of my family" or "earrings based on my particular rare nerdy hobby" or whatnot. It could potentially be useful for small spare parts, too, if manufacturers would start keeping a universal a database - sometimes tracking down spare parts can be almost impossible (for example, you live in a non-serviced area, or the company goes out of business) or the delays insufferable.
I also think that it's possible to have a smooth continuum between 3d printing services and bulk manufacturing services. Picture a system where you design your part, whether for personal use or commercial sale. Each time you buy one, it's 3d printed. But you also have the option to prepay to tool for higher production volumes, on the same site. Maybe you have to wait for quotes, maybe the site automatically assesses tooling costs, times, and unit costs for you... whatever the case may be. The higher the volumes you pay to tool for, the lower the cost per unit you can get. And of course such a system could automatically recognize when others are already producing the same parts for something and use an existing production line, or where an existing line could be easily modified to produce your part, or could suggest modifications to your part to make use of an existing line... there's a wide range of possibilities. The service could, without the user having to pay for it, tool up to produce a part that many people are ordering in small quantities (paying back the upfront cost via the lower production cost, then slowly reducing the purchase price). Assembly services could be likewise made available to users. But the short of it is 3d printers could be part of a continuum of manufacturing possibilities made simple for users behind companies that deal with the actual contracting out for production, in exchange for a couple percent cut of the profit. The user is simply made aware of the possibilities and picks the ones that best suit them - whether it's "I want this custom bracelet" or "I want one of these bike gears... good, that works well, now make me 10.000 of them".
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Where the cost of shipping is prohibitive - the Canadian Arctic, say - mass production might not even come out ahead.
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It's not just places like the Canadian arctic. Here in Iceland, if I want to import anything, after shipping and import taxes, I have to wait several weeks and pay usually over double the purchase price. 3d printing most definitely has its uses, if it can get mainstreamed.
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Really, shipping bulk raw materials is equivalent to shipping finished goods, in your world? Finished goods are usually predominantly waste space, are full of packaging, have to be handled gingerly, and need to be distributed to individuals in different locations. Raw materials are packed together as densely as possible, little to no packaging, can be thrown around, and go straight to just a couple manufacturers. And when import taxes come into play, it's even more extreme, since those are generally based o
Re:So in the future ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's already being used for items like old tail-lights, that cost too much from suppliers because of scarcity.
As with everything, economies of scale and increases in technology will bring the per-unit cost down.
When a body shop has the choice between ordering a whole assembly for $250, or printing up just the cracked lens that the dealer won't sell them separately for $50, they'll print to order.
Replacement parts, where the OEM won't sell just the tiny plastic gear (you need to buy the whole fuser unit) are a good example. Switch housing got cracked? Sorry, we don't sell just that ... No, we only sell that in mininum quantities of 4. New knob? Sorry, you have to buy the whole timer.
This will allow for a lot of "unbundling", and could result in a revival of do-it-yourself repairs. And less waste.
this is opposite of economy of scale (Score:2, Interesting)
> As with everything, economies of scale and increases in technology will bring the per-unit cost down
"Economies of scale" refers to the various reasons that it's cheaper to do something 10,000 times, assembly line fashion, rather than one piece at a time. In other words, the exact OPPOSITE of what's being talked about here.
It may be useful where , due to the inefficiency of handling an order for one 20 cent knob, the manufacturer doesn't sell parts directly to consumers. The knob that costs 20 cents
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Actually, it IS about economies of scale, even thought the scale is smaller. The more 3d printers are manufactured, the lower the cost and the more features (bang for the buck) that scaling out any product brings.
The same for the end user. To use the patio chair example, if it costs me 3 times as much to print out a replacement chair as the single unit cost at the store, I'll still opt for printing if the store will only sell me in lots of 6. Right now, it will cost 100 times as much, but that's going t
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> The more 3d printers are manufactured, the lower the cost and the more features (bang for the buck) that scaling out any product brings.
A 3D printer in a retail setting, where it's kept fairly busy, will use a few thousand dollars worth of filament and electricity every month. A retail location needs to charge the same amount again to cover labor costs (a $9.50 employee costs $20/hour with taxes, healthcare, workers comp, etc.) Then roughly the same amount again for rent of the floor space, signage
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I had a dishwasher, a brand that touted itself for quality. The door latch kept breaking. The part was only $5, but shipping was $15, so I ordered them in quantity.
6 months later, they were all broken.
With a 3-d printer. I could have made them on demand, and saved shipping costs and the part was small enough, it might have even printed for $5.
Better yet, knowing the weak spots in the latch, I probably could have re-designed the latch with proper reinforcement at the failure point.
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At least you could get the spare part. I have an electrolux refrigerator in Iceland which I bought used; one of the food compartment lids broke a week ago. Electrolux doesn't have a service center in Iceland and none of the other ones overseas will export to me, they said "just find someone local who sells electrolux refrigerators and order through them", except that none of the local retailers have been willing to.
And at least it's an Electrolux. What if it was a company that had gone out of business?
I wan
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Obviously, it has been classified as a Munition by the US Government, and therefore parts are interdicted.
Oh wait, HQ in Sweden? Hmmm. The Assange Effect strikes again!
I understand your signature now. Ye yorn hath been too long exiled from English as well!
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Have them print up a 3D printer for you, then after the purchase your only costs are material and energy, which could easily be less than even the scale costs + profit + shipping of a factory producer.
Conclusion: China's cheap labor advantage will become irrelevant. Manufacturing becomes decentralized and local, jobs decrease, leisure time increases, and (with a basic income) we are closer to utopia.
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China's cheap labor advantage has aleady been becoming irrelevant. The workers have been demanding raises, robots cost about the same whichever country you're located in, 3D printing is just another nail in the coffin.
The "basic income" part is what's becoming problematic.
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The question becomes, how to get manufacturer buy in?
For starters, I think we need a certification mark for products, at the very least, to indicate that their parts are 3d printable (see above). But beyond that, I'm not really sure how to get manufacturer buy-in.
Re: So in the future ... (Score:2)
Modern 3d printers are dot matrix style. Slow moving heads with poor resolution dependent on head alignment. Using photosensitive polymer resins it should be possible to make a head similar to a laser printer which can remove an entire axis of motion and substantially increase performance. Add ejection of color dye as well and it's even better. Printing 3d doesn't have to be expensive as the materials become more readily available and printers become more evolved.
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You know, I was just thinking, wouldn't it be possible to make a rapid 3d *moulder*, for those bulk parts that you don't require as much precision on (aka, chair)? Picture a stretchable half-mould surface, on a large bed (maybe 50x100cm for a home edition, larger for a workshop) with a grid of little pistons on it that can change it's shape (nothing too high res, maybe one every square centimeter). Picture a second half-mould positioned just opposite, such that the two elements can close off off a 3d space.
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I'm sure there will be a day when a basic chair can be printed for $5. Advances in material sciences and printers are required, but the demand is there and it doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem.
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You mean we'll finally see the day of the nanotechnological assembler? Will we finally get to the leisure, post-scarcity society? Will we get rid of the 40 hour work week and 95% employment when most jobs are just performance art?
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And I believe you must be posting from the far distant future (and, apparently humans have evolved to handle very high temperatures or our current projections on the lifecycle of the Sun are very wrong).
Cars have many different materials in them and even the same materials get processed differently (with heat treating, chemical baths, etching etc). Stocking all these materials efficiently and being a
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While I agree with you, I think it's important not to overgeneralize today's methods of 3d printing with being the only methods possible.
For example, I've often speculated a lot about the prospect of using thermal spraying as a printing method. That is, you have any sort of powder or other fine material, fed into a chamber with the Venturi effect. Therein a custom mix of air and fuel is injected at specifically chosen partial pressures. Consequently, depending on what material you're using, you can
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And yet you want to 3d print a fuel cell for a car? How do you plan to 3d print a PEM?
At least 3d printing a battery might be plausible if you have a 3d printer that can take an extremely wide range of materials (not a li-ion battery, though, you run into the same sort of membrane problems.. I really doubt there's any technology that will allow you to just jet down a membrane material and have it allow through
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Captcha: Pervert
Well, actually, there's plenty of sex shops around where you can buy custom-molded dildos, sold by the pound of plastic or latex... (saw some in Brussels, but most likely other large cities have those too).
Remind me to start a company... (Score:2)
Remind me to start a company specialising in generating 3D CAD models of custom dildos! :)
By the way, have they figured out how to print softer, rubber-like materials yet? I have an idea of a sister company too...
Paul B.
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I know it was a joke, but yes, there is a filament called Ninjaflex that is both soft and flexible and will print on most types of ABS filament printers. I probably wouldn't recommend it for sex toys but it does make a good material for bracelets and such.
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The range of filament materials is growing rapidly, everything from stone and wood to various kinds of flexible and stretchable rubber like materials. One of the better known ones is NinjaFlex, but their suitability for "medical" use is a bit more limited
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iMaterialize has a material called "Rubber-like", which is a plastic called TPU 92A-1.
iphone case for $60? (Score:1)
fail
$60 for an iPhone case sounds high, but it isn't. (Score:4)
Actually, $60 for a iPhone case sounds expensive today, and perhaps it is compared to mass manufactured cases, but for a 3D printed case from a retail store, that sounds quite cheap to me.
The price will come down over time, this has to get out there and people try it out, when more stores get it, the price will of course come down with volume (look how cheap printers have become, compared to 20 years ago).
The big one will be Walmart. I've heard that Walmart has considered putting in a large 3D printer in the back of their stores to be able to provide custom products and expand their offerings, without having to actually carry more stuff.
Not just for 1-off 3D items that people design, because frankly most people will suck at that. Just like having a printer doesn't make you an author, having a 3D printer doesn't make you a designer.
But what if they had a catalog you could browse with 100,000 items in 100 different categories, and you could then put your personal touch on them by picking color, or a logo, etc...
It won't happen in a year, but I'll be in 20 years we'll take this for granted.
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Any university or public library in Halifax will 3D print for $1/hr. An iPhone case would be like $4 at most.
This is gouging. I mean, I built a carbon fiber / steel 3D printer for under $400!
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Fortunately, most commercial 3D printers available now are spinoffs of open source hardware. It's almost as if the developers noticed the shitty state of the inkjet printer market or something.
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correction
most crappy hot glue gun commercial model is based off of open source, most good quality 3D printers are not
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Work recently spent about $5k for cube and it isn't printing any better than the 4 other 3d printers I've used 3 of them costs less than $1000.
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its still a hot melt glue gun on a xy bed go look at podwer systems, composite resin systems and SLA
for instance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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think you missed the point, when I said good quality ones I didnt mean a toy you buy off of amazon.com
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sigh, selective reading
Originally it was said all most printers are based on open source, I stated no not high quality commercial ones, so point out a commercial grade printer VS a copycat open source one is TOTALLY FUCKING RELEVANT
just cause you want to jump in with your snotty ass attitude in the middle of a discussion does not mean you have all the information
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Did I miss the great 2-D printing lock-down that happened in 2014 where they all have a ton of restrictions and don't take generic ink?
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...and have still been easily refillable and replaceable with generics well before 2014.
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Yeah I also thought that was expensive. For comparison, I consider the Otter Box [otterbox.com] to be a great case, it's the one I use (on my S4), it's certainly more functional and higher quality than a printed one would be. The Otter Box comes in different levels and the most expensive one is a bit less than $60. I paid $40 for my consumer-level case.
I don't think that means they can't find a market for it, just that I'm probably not that market.
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I'm sorry that you feel that way. As an Engineer who has experience with 3D CAD modeling, I love my printer. If I can design it, I can print it. I can understand that this is an extremely niche market right now and I don't expect everyone to want to run out and blow a grand or two on a personal printer, however that doesn't mean that the whole technology should be painted as irrelevant.
I don't expect these to be in every home in the next 20 years, but I can see them in more than a few garages. Just as most
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While I don't see the need for a 3-d printer for myself, right now, I'd love to be able to walk into a place, scan a broken part, and have them print a new plastic one.
On my outdoor shed, there's a plastic proprietary piece of plastic that holds the door off the ground and lets it slide. The plastic broke, and I have no chance of just being able to get a replacement part. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look! But if I had access to a 3-d printer, I could glue the part back together, scan it, and get
The web site sucks. (Score:4, Informative)
I took a look at the 3D printing serves section on the UPS web site. It gives you precisely zero details on how or what to do. They claim an F.A.Q. is "What Kind of things can I 3D Print". But they don't think "What 3D file formats do you accept" is an FAQ, when it is obviously the first thing you want to know after "Is this going to bankrupt me?"
The web site is hermetically sealed. No useful information can escape.
Staples (Score:4, Interesting)
What happened to Staples plan to put out 3d printers in it's locations?
The first!!! (Score:3)
after staples
http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre... [staples.com]
how about you focus less on 3d printing and not taking a week to deliver a package 2 states away when the post office doe it in 3 days for half the price, cause then I might actually USE UPS at some point
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Low on details (Score:1)
Just like staples? (Score:1)
Staples announced they would be providing this service here in the Netherlands in all their shops.
It turns out that they are printing in some sort of "full color" paper. Nice to make a 3D model of a head in natural colors, but not appropriate to make moving parts for technical projects. And it was difficult to get the "design rules". And when I finally got those, there were rules like "no cavities".
Femur, you say? (Score:2)
a replica femur bone would be around $325
Do a full skeleton. Most expensive Halloween lawn decoration ever? I guess my decision to simply imagine whipping up a convincing skeleton from junk I have lying around the yard and house was correct. LOL, I never follow through on any of those ideas. Last year I literally wrote "Boo" on a piece of cardboard and stuck it in a window near the door. That was my Halloween decoration. I'm that lazy and cheap when it comes to those things.
3d scanners + 3d printers will wreak havoc (Score:2)
Just wait until you can trade 3d designs of Warhammer 40k armies and print them out assembled for a lower cost than buying them in stores. Having the ability to print D&D & pathfinder miniatures for pennies worth of plastic instead of $4-$30 retail cost will be nice. Reaper Bones may not have as long a lifespan as their lead and pewter predecessors.
For all the nay/.ers (Score:1)
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Which is why I really hope to see Project Tango in the future connect direct with 3d printing.
Scan your scene with your phone, click to print, pick the article in question out of the scene (with simple cutting tools and smart select), assign a material to it (with the app doing its best to choose defaults), possibly apply some filters (welding broken pieces together, for example) or stretch it a bit in different direct
Re:Competitive pricing? Depends... (Score:2)
Oh, sure, you can get a whole skeleton for under a grand, but you get a generic skeleton.
What if you wanted a custom skeleton? A skeleton with a particular deformity? Or maybe a non-earth skeleton? Compared to the cost of having a skeleton custom carved/molded, this would be cheap.
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Come to think of it, this has to be a godsend for Hollywood. They've got the budgets, and you can use the same model for both CG special effects and printing for camera work (whether we're talking about printing for miniatures, animatronics, prosthetics, molds for prosthetics, gadgets or other small objects, etc). No need to have both your 3d artist and a physical artist create the same thing.