Jay Leno and his NextEngine 3D Scanner. Courtesy Popular Mechanics

Need a replacement part for a decades-old or exotic car? All Jay Leno does is get the part he wants to replace, and use a 3D scanner to convert into information his 3D printer understands. He then waits a few hours while the printer reproduces a plastic facsimile. After printing’s done (which can take as long as 33 hours), Leno checks if the newly-fabricated plastic part fits as a replacement properly. Once everything checks out, the plastic is used to create a mold to create a real (usually metal) replacement.

The gadgets in use? The NextEngine 3D scanner and the Dimension 3D printer. Priced at $3,000 and $15,000 respectively, it’s clear that the Jay Leno way requires lots of money—which he probably has in spades anyway.

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Post from: The Gadget Blog

Bear with me folks: if you know anything about 3D modeling, then you know how complicated that process can be, especially when it involves unorthodox shapes that aren’t easily understood by the spatial mind.

You then probably know how hard it is to get a 3D printer to produce these kind of shapes. 3D printers are basically a quick way to fabricate objects; you just provide it with a 3D model, and it gets to work, usually creating a real object based on the specs by packing power into the desired shape. It’s a quick way to produce an actual model, most probably to help determine if a product concept works.

Simply put, the sheer intricacy of the objects featured at MAKE Magazine illustrate just how far the 3D prototyping process has come. Could we conceivably see models of intricately articulated gadgets by next year? A helix-shaped Bluetooth headset anyone?

(Image by MAKE Magazine; more intricate shapes found there)

Post from: The Gadget Blog