I would definitely like to have a 3D printer in our laboratory. Hell, I would even like to have one at home. But the technology is still very expensive and if you can’t really justify its need (at least on a daily basis), you probably won’t spend your grant money on it.
However, there is an alternative. You might have heard about the company Roland —- I know I have—- but the name still reminds me of the brand making different electronic musical instruments. Now they started to make a miniature CNC milling center. Basically, if 3D printing is adding material to create your object, the Roland iModela works in the opposite way: you place a block of material inside the little machine, and material gets removed to create your desired shape.
Although this seems like the ideal toy to manufacture funny little earrings, key-chains, model railway parts and plastic monsters, I think it holds much more potential than that. Especially for a science lab… If you are used to improvising experiments, sometimes you need to create prototypes of… whatever you are working on. This $1000 (!) milling center helps to create parts of your project faster and cheaper. If you can think it, you can draw it in CAD and now you can even manufacture it. Check out the video:
(via monolithos)
