If you’ve never heard of 3D printing and wondered what the heck it is then your going to want to read this post. 3D printing has been around for about 10 years from what I gather but like many of you I have never heard of it until this year. Until now, 3D printing has been far out of reach of home use because of cost. What it is is a machine that basically makes anything you want or need from virtually nothing but plastics like ABS ( legos ) , HDPE ( milk jugs ) , or PLA ( a biodegradable plastics made from corn and apparently smells like waffles when it melts ! ) . What is does is melt a spool of plastic through a very small syringe type nozzle which is very fine by the size of a few microns ( less than the width of a human hair ) that is heated and where the plastic is placed in fine layers on a platform. The way it works is either by only the nozzle is being moved up and down, forward and back , as well as side , or the platform moves on those axis instead. All these machines may work differently but do the same thing. There are quite a few companies emerging with this revolutionary form of technology involving manufacturing things from your home.

Many companies such as Makerbot , Pandabot, Reprap, Solidoodle , or Objet – (most expensive , mostly for companies with a bigger budget) have exploded this market into a 1.3 Billion dollar industry (as of august 2012). However these are only the companies in which you can make your own things at home, there are many others out there on the internet which will provide you the service and ship you the 3D printed parts you would have asked them for. The other fascinating thing in regards to 3D printing is that metal parts can also be printed into a physical , tangible form. What they do is use a very fine metal powder and a bonding agent to create the metal objects like jewelry and such. You simply would not believe how precise these machines can be or how detailed the objects are once they are printed and it is truly amazing to see them printed before your eyes. Of course the machine doesn’t print all the necessary flight controllers and electronics and such for a multi rotor but it is very cool. By the way, if Makerbot or Solidoodle would like to send me a review unit they could certainly do so as I would be very interested. I found a few videos on these machines that I would like to share with you but keep in mind they are not mine and I do not profit from them in any way.

If you already own a MakerBot and want to 3D print your own PL1Q Vampire Quad copter, you can find those plans here : PL1Q Vampire Quad copter plans . Keep in mind I don’t own these plans or make a profit from them. If you would like to see more multi rotors that you can 3D print you can find them here at THINGIVERSE .

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Enjoy.