California's first 3D printer retail store to sell $600 model

[Mopar151]

28. I first worked with this technology in the late '80's

It was called stereolothography then. the company I worked for (TAFA) had a niche market for some of its metal spraying equipment - making sprayed metal molds from models. Stereolithography was being evaluated as a modelmaking process. Trouble is, you can't just make a mold of any shape - the model has to be shaped so that the mold sections will come off, i.e. tapered sides or sections of spheres, cylinders.... This is a pretty serious constraint, because incorporating this geometry into the model is anything but simple, and vexes those who want to be creative without learning the craft.

I've done a good bit of mold work in the context of machining, and have made a lot of complex stuff out of solid metal stock. If, absent hollow sections, you have enough geometric information to make something by 3D printing, you have enough to machine it from solid metal faster and more economically. The intermediate stage of making a plastic model is pretty much superflous. Computer numerical control of machine tools (CNC) is one of the first applications of computing to become comercially viable, and is still developing at a furious pace.