Tuesday, November 18, 2014

China, yo time is up





Something I saw ...


The Air Force already bought one.

So did Nike, BMW, and Disney World. Jay Leno has one in his garage (but it's not a car). And now that the sticker price has plummeted from $100,000 to $799, it won't be long before everyone buys one.

Business Insider says it's "the next trillion dollar industry." The Economist has gone even further, comparing its history-changing impact to the steam engine and the printing press.

Too good to be true? Wall Street thinks so. Meanwhile, technology watchers are whispering that this invention could be "bigger than the internet."

See, the innovators behind the iPod, Google and Amazon.com have been big boosters all along. And you still have time to join them — if you act fast.

Because when the skeptics wise up, the big money will already be off the table.

The opportunity to profit from a transformative technology like this might come along once in a lifetime.

That's why The Motley Fool is releasing this stunning investor alert video — to help individual investors like you jump on the 3 stocks that get you the biggest piece of the action.

I was wrong.  *Slaps head*.  What did you guess?  ANSWER

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guessed right!

Jilly

DougM said...

Yeah!
I'm fully invested in the Betamax architecture.
Whaaat ?

Anonymous said...

Had some dealings with it early this year.
Found it very primitive in that it was rough compared to machining, limited in size of model (~ a 16" cube), very slow (about 75 hrs. run time to make 16" x 16" x 6" model), only moderately strong, very expensive.
I think it's about where PC's were in 1984. Find the right company, put a few bucks in, be an Apple like millionaire in 10-15 years. Trick is finding the right company.
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

Rodger the Real King of France said...

That is good info Dick! As usual.

Scott said...

I am looking forward for a more affordable 3-d laser sintering printer.

Anonymous said...

I was a machinist for 25 years, CNC programmer, have watched this tech develop since the 80s, do 3D CAD now, and have had close exposure to some of the best 3D printers in the world.

My take: extremely cool, fun, and useful but tremendously over-hyped.

The thing that makes me cringe the hardest is comparison to Star Trek's replicators. It's not even in the same country.

There have been scads of articles whose headlines blare about 3d printed guns and cars, giving the impression to the low education types that they are magic.

It's getting better and better at a rate faster than I expected but it will never replace traditional metal parts. Even plastic is pushing the limits. It simply isn't possible to get the same properties. The process of making a bar or plate of steel or aluminum makes it tougher and stronger. It's tempered and rolled. And while the precision can be pretty darned good, it will never get the precision and surface finish possible with traditional machining.

It will not be the revolution many are making it to be. Will it become a standard appliance in most homes? Very possibly. It can make useful things now and will improve. But they will always be weaker and much more expensive than traditional methods.

It's great for prototypes, one-of-a-kind, custom fitted plastic parts. That's where it kicks traditional method's butt. Making a prototype can be hellishly expensive and take months where a 3D printed can do it in hours for a few hundred bucks. You can hold a proposed design in your hand tomorrow, change it, and have the revised version the day after. That is an incredible thing.

People are forgetting that you need the 3D computer model before you can print anything. That gives me hope I'll still have a job for years to come. If you want to duplicate an existing thing you have to measure it.

Watch for desktop machining to take off. It's already starting. It will allow you to make real parts out of real metal with the kind of precision and strength needed to make things like gun parts.

Annoyed White Male

toadold said...

And that d....AutoCAD software cost to much. There need to be cheaper imaging software and cheaper instruction on how to use it. The price of electron beam 3-D for sintering metal needs to come down and it needs to be faster. The ideal would be a machine that you could insert a block of forged steel into and get a polished finished product out. Can't think of how to do that though.

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