If you haven't yet heard of 3-D printing, prepare to be blown away.
Making baits (or anything else for that matter) is about to get a whole lot easier. This is not new technology, but until now hasn't been obtainable for the masses.
Z Corp. has teamed up with HP and is coming out with these "printing" machines that can perfectly replicate anything you can scan into a computer. Both plastic and metal objects alike with as many moving parts as you can imagine. This video shows a wrench being made with plastic resin but they also have capabilities of metals such as stainless steel. There are a ton of related videos on YouTube if you're interested. You can buy one of these base model machines right now for under $15,000. Within the next few years these will be mass produced and very affordable. It sounds crazy, but in the very near future, you'll be printing your lures...and your new custom rims, and whatever else you want. You'd have to think that whatever manufacturing jobs are left are about to be all but disolved once these become household items.
This isn't science fiction anymore. Enjoy!
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Saw that about 2 years ago. I don't think anyone will be making wheels for their cars anytime soon. Or duplicating a Shimano Curado. There is alot more to manufacturing than that. Type of steel, alumnimun, tempering, forging to align the molecules,stamping etc. Good video though!
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I have seen these demos at work a while back and as others have mentioned this is absolutely incredible technology. These printers are saving companies millions in many areas. We are in the automotive industry and this process eliminates the need for the engineers to build tooling to make prototype parts that may change along the way. It really saves in the design phase. It does not create functional parts but it does make them to the real size and shape to allow for engineers to examine their design. We are not using it at our workplace because we are dealing mostly with products once they have completed this design phase.
Thats something else right there....However, there will ALWAYS be a place for hand made craftsmanship that no machines will EVER be able to replicate totally IMHO.
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Saw that about 2 years ago. I don't think anyone will be making wheels for their cars anytime soon. Or duplicating a Shimano Curado. There is alot more to manufacturing than that. Type of steel, alumnimun, tempering, forging to align the molecules,stamping etc. Good video though!
Way to rain on my parade Snakecharmer. I was really hoping to be able to print me a Ferrari one day soon.
Seriously though, this is def. only the beginning of this technology. I have to agree that making a set of wheels or a Curado probably isn't a possibility yet, but how long will it take for that to be reality? This video shows a stainless ring design that was made with a 3-D printer. I'm sure a metallurgist could give you a hundred realistic reasons as to why you still can't make this or that but it's still in the crawling stages of development. Who knows where it will eventually lead? In ten years I might be sitting here printing me up some Nachos.
Jay Leno uses one to make casts for parts for his car collection. There will always be general labor jobs though. Somebody's gotta push the button somewhere lol.
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I'll give you one reason why i doubt it will work for fishing lures (this is not the beginning of this technology, i was working on this 17 years ago, and it was around a few years before that). Unless you want to make plastic tie ins, hook hangers, and have no ballast, when the printer goes to "print" (i.e. Laser sinter) the metal parts, the surrounding plastic will melt.
You could make the two plastic halves, the metal hardware and ballast, then glue things in place/together.
P.s. Can it make things out of wood? Plastic? No thanks.
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Interesting James T. Thanks for the info. I had no idea how using both metal and plastic would work together using this process. Making 2 part plastic lure bodies would sure be a snap you would think. If this resin is capable of being clear it would be a plus too. I'm sure that this has many limitations as of now, but how cool would it be to have one of these? I have plastic hinges on my boat that they don't make anymore and one of them is broken. This could make as many as I want. For things like that alone I can see these being huge once the price drops. The overall concept is only limited by ones imagination.
I'm looking at one that does something similar now for less than $2,000. Not to make lures, but to assist in the process.
Nice! It would be so fun to play around with even a base model of one of these. Under 2 grand is getting closer to my ballpark. One would think that the cost of the materials like stainless powder and plastic resins would be pretty expensive though. It can't be very cost effective just to make up a few lures or whatever but mass production may be?
This is a real breakthrough for industries in cases like what BKR was describing. The possibilities are crazy. It will be fun to watch where this is heading to. There are a million cool James Bond toys and inventions out there but very few are ever affordable. It sounds like these will be fairly inexpensive once they catch on and are mass produced. Check out some of the YouTube videos and look at the amazing intricate things that people have made. From toys to jewelry to car parts and everything else. Some of these things would be almost impossible to make in a machine shop. Really cool!
there are a few variations of the same general concept. This is one. This one has a number of steps and is fairly labor intensive. Notice how the stuff made is mostly decorative or a prototype. You will not find these parts in critical components like on planes, cars, etc(dimensions, tolerances, surface finish, more than likely strength, etc not up to spec). If someones life depends on it, forget it. You could not make parts of 2 materials using this particular technology. Its basically a glorified sand box. When I was working on it, we used a slightly different process. Instead of having a sandbox of metal powder then laying down binder, we had a sandbox that was filled with a mixture of metal powder and polymer (plastic) powder. Ours (dtm corporation)had a laser that then sintered the polymer layer by layer from a cad file. Since it was a mixture of metal and polymer powder, we then had to heat it up to burn off the polymer then sinter the metal powder. The problem we had was the dimensions of the part slightly shifting during this step (we were hoping to make parts for aerospace applications). You can't see it in the picture, but gumby is slightly leaning forward(note individual metal layers on gumby). Prior to the burnoff and sintering stage, gumby was fine. In the video they support the "green" part with aluminum oxide during their "infusion" of bronze step to minimize changing dimensions.
3-d printing/stereolithography is slightly different yet, but same general concept of building layer by layer from cad file. Instead of having a "sandbox", it uses a uv curable photopolymer resin a a uv laser. There are other variations too but none that I know of that can make something from more than 1 material. That is a pretty crazy concept but then again we live in a pretty crazy world. Don't see it happening though.
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"PLEASE get back to fishing, if you just want to pick fights and complain, go talk to your wives, or for some of you that aren't old enough, your girlfriends."
and my first paragraph in my first response doesn't make sense since currently it is not possible to make something consisting of more than one material using any of these techniques. Sorry bout that, I've been out of the loop for a while. I hate to say never, but I just don't see this happening.
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"PLEASE get back to fishing, if you just want to pick fights and complain, go talk to your wives, or for some of you that aren't old enough, your girlfriends."
Just saw a video that says they are experimenting with printing wings for commercial aircraft. Also read where an elderly woman in Europe has a new printed jaw bone. Just crazy!
The future of lure making is here (video)
The future of lure making is here (video)
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