A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Long. Printers are pretty complicated machines, because they have to work with a natural product that shrinks, expands, folds, rolls itself up and sticks to other pieces of paper. I once heard a printer engineer explain that they use small puffs of air to lift the paper, but because there's also heat involved in the printing process that the paper sometimes rolls itself up or expands which causes jams etc. And I'm sure there's more going on.
Which isn't to say that HP aren't bastards.
If we shoot for a much more primitive printer, we’re pretty close.
Something that uses a pen or quill to draw on an unmoving sheet of paper. Kind of like how CNC routers are set up. The gantry moves along the full length and width of the paper.
After that, you can print everything outside the electronics and the quill. Right?
That's just a plotter. Replace the extruder nozzle with a pen and you're there.
Paper shrinks and expands? What?
Everything shrinks and expands as you heat/cool it. It's called physics and it's a fucking mess. The more you learn the weirder it gets 😵💫
God damn physics some much for the immaculate plan. Why did god invent physics anyway?
/s
not until the existence of 4D printer, that can print a 3D printer
But wouldn't that mean that you already have a 3d printer that can print a 2d printer? As the 4th "D" is time?
The fourth D is right beside you, even if you can’t see it. It penetrates you everywhere.
The D was inside you the whole time.
That's why your organs leak out from your ana and kata
Oh wow I must be an expert in 5D then, 6D on special occasions.
It penetrates you everywhere.
Kinky.
There are actually a bunch of theoretical spatial dimensions, including 4th. Check out the HYPERCUBE!
That's nothing compared to the TIMECUBE
Schizophrenia on display.
Holy shit dude that is absolutely unhinged, very glad I saw it. I'll never be the same
Imma 4th deez nuts down ur throat!
You can already 3d print a plotter, which is close.
Likely not for a long time.
3D printers aren't a magic make anything tool. They are a versatile and useful addition to our toolboxes.
You could likely print a lot of the parts now. Unfortunately, it would be the "vitamins" that would catch you out. Circuit boards are possible, but difficult. Silicon chips are currently impossible. Print heads would be almost impossible to print too.
Instead, I would expect someone to come up with a more general "auto fabricator". A combination of tools combined with robotics, and a standard set of "vitamin" components. Such a system is perfectly feasible (though not that soon) and could go from raw materials to a functional 2D printer. It could also make a kitchen blender, a new lamp, or whatever you decided you wanted (within reason).
An interesting take is the book series of the bobbyiverse, starting with "We are legion, we are bob". They play around with the limits of 3D printing, and how to go beyond them.
Tl;Dr 3D printers are awesome, but not a "do everything" tool.
*Silicon. Silicone is a kind of rubber.
Damn autocorrect ducking up my messages. Thanks for the heads up.
If you have enough money, you can technically do so right now. The only thing you wouldn't be able to print assuming money was no object and access to certain tools was readily available are the magnets for the motors. At least I don't think... Can you melt a magnet down and reshape it and it still is magnetic? 🤔
There are metal fab printers and the way circuits are mass produced is also, essentially, 3D printing. You couldn't do a print-in-place type print and make a completed printer. Unless you combined everything into a single unit. Which would be expensive as fuck.
How much of this thing could be reprap'd?
If you're not going to click the link, it's an HP dot matrix inkjet from 1984 that...doesn't look that complicated to make.
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It is possible right now. OP didn't say an electrical printer, it is 100% doable on old mechanical printing model.
You can start here: https://hackaday.io/project/176931-hp-printer-cartridge-control-module/details
HP printers are conceptually quite simple devices, the printer just moves the cartridge and the paper. The cartridge does all the actual printing. So you reverse engineer the pinout on the cartridge and you can make your 3d printer do normal printing. That's also how those little handheld cube printers work.
limx->0 1/x