The dreaded 9C3 test...

As part of my consultancy work I am looking ahead all the time. I always have kits and bits and pieces around that are touted as 'the next big thing' but when examined its clear that for school educational use, its not quite ready. To decide this for myself I use my now infamous 9C3 test which assesses whether a new idea / object / process would be safe with 9C3 (14 year olds) after lunch on a snowy afternoon after a fight in the playground. If its robust enough, easy enough or plain educational enough then its time to think about implementing it in an average classroom. Usually the manufacturers have 'proved' some things educational worth with a lovely school where you would have to pump mercury vapour into the classroom for months to appreciably affect the amazingly high exam grades already present. I prefer to tel you its ready for the mainstream when it IS...

3D Printing didn't, until now, pass my 9C3 test. It was too expensive, too slow and too complicated. Now the latest generation of 3D printers are here, do not look like the set of a Mad Max movie and you shouldn't have to shout 'ill just adjust that' every ten minutes to disproving governors watching a dysfunctional demonstration.

This:

has been 3D printed
using this:

I have seen films of it working and I have one of the ballraces above in my hand right now. It weighs about 30g including support scaffolding so uses £1.03 of plastic (67c US) which can be bought in 1KG reels for about £35 and comes in the same stuff lego bricks are made of (Tough, very tough!) or a biodegradeable starch based polymer (price unknown) which the company is going to begin stocking in a few weeks time. I have seen a real time video and it only takes just over an hour to make, then weed (remove) the 'scaffold' (Bits that hold it all in place while being printed) off to leave the working bearing. Now its not really functional as a heavy duty 60mm diameter bearing (about the diameter of a coke can) because the surface texture is a little rough. Akin to medium glasspaper but very hard. The machine prints from standard STL files and the accompanying software has a reasonable built in utility that works out where the support needs to be for thin bits etc automatically. You can output an STL file form pretty much any 3D printer including Sketchup, but you'll need to use a third party plug in for the free version of Sketchup.

So there you are, I recommend this printer because it may need a bit of minor technician help to keep it going, but its robust, easy to understand, cheap and relatively fast. It will make something up to 140mm cube and costs about £1250 + VAT. It takes about 30 minutes to set up and start printing out of the box. And the best bit? It works NOW and you can buy it NOW! I found out about it at coolcomponents and thank you to them for letting me use their photos!