There is increasing buzz about so-called "personal manufacturing," and rightly so. Industry is now "printing" 3D parts not previously possible and directly from CAD models. Examples include components for racing motorcycles, metal patches for airplane wings, and, for that matter, metal patches for cracked human skulls. The vision: soon individuals will be able to make objects (such as that pesky lost house key) in the same way at home.

A middle step to this is the Fab Lab, the idea for which came out of M.I.T. They aim to provide an incubator for local micro-businesses by bringing high-tech manufacturing capabilities to anyone. Fab Labs are springing up in the U.S. and are already found in countries such as India, Norway, Africa, and Costa Rica. Check out the video from our recent visit to a local Lab. We interviewed various parties there on topics ranging from putting fabrication in the hands of everyone and using a desktop mill to coming up with innovative concepts, such as for the featured "ring key."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Leslie Gordon,

We use the Roland Modela MDX-20 CNC machine / plotter for cutting smaller parts in wax, plaster and plastic. 3D part models are created in Rhinocerous first and then sent to the plotter.

www.cadprototyping.com

Modela MDX-20 movie of part prototyping

design3d@cadprototyping.com

This message has been edited. Last edited by: www.cadprototyping.com,

Thank you so much for your feedback. I'm curious: What file format do you save the Rhino files in to send them to the Roland machine?

Last year, I visited the Roland factory in Japan, where they actually make the little machines. They have a so-called "digital factory," in which every step of the machine-building process is documented and stored digitally in the company database.

--Leslie Gordon