My first find, but definitely not the only one, is Romscraj.com that sells 1.75mm PLA filaments at S$24/kg.
The Rigidbot's creators sell them at US$20/kg which is almost exactly the same price.
So I think I'll use this as the benchmark.
However, I was able to find cheaper prices from Chinese manufacturers that offer the same at price of up to US$12.90/kg, or almost S$16/kg. The shipping can't be cheap but I might be able to get one of my Chinese suppliers to hide it into one of my shipments to take advantage of the lower shipping rate.
Might hit S$18 net per kg depending on the amount of cargo is involved in that shipment.
But even at S$18/kg, it's not going to be cheaper to print objects we use at home compared to buying them.
For example, my plastic mug weighs 100g. This much PLA plastic will cost me S$1.80, probably about twice as much as the price of the original mug. A clothes hanger weighs about 45-50g, or S$0.90 of plastic, while I can easily get them at slightly over half the price in the neighbourhood stores nearby.
As far as I know, PLA plastic is also food-safe, but this article pointed out 2 things that might make things a little more complicated.
- Many 3D printer hot ends contain materials that are certainly not food safe. The only exception being the new all stainless steel model by Prusa. So if you are not using an all stainless steel hot end, trace amounts of nasties could find their way from your printer hot end, into your model and eventually into your food.
- Most PLA is coloured. So other additives have been added to your PLA to give it a funky colour. If you are printing things that contact foods, you should stick with ‘virgin’ or ‘natural’ PLA like what you can find at Diamond Age Solutions.
Another thing is that because everything that is printed are mostly porous, they are not suitable to be reusable dining utensils because the pores will make it almost impossible to get them clean, just like cracks.
The solution to these is to finish them with food-safe lacquer, eg polyeutherane which should probably be found at hardware stores. I think most people who have watched Breaking Bad may remember how safe it is.
Anyways, ordered the 3D printer for about S$500 net.
And then we have the S$600 3D scanner. It was S$500 but the C$349 option ran out. With an extra S$30 for surface shipping, the cost will be roughly S$600.
So nowadays, S$1000 can get me a system that can clone simple objects at home. Maybe not the larger ones like chairs since the scanner's only 19*19*25cm large.
I will definitely NOT be buying it since I don't see how I will use it, but it just looks interesting.
Starcraft 2 HoTS's new evolution system is impressive. It adds a new level of depth to the strategy but won't it also make players less flexible with their tactics?
I'm very interested to see how professional players handle it in the GSL. Some of the mechanisms I might even regard as game-breaking, like the fast zergling strain that spawns in trios instead of duos. With banelings being so popular among Zerg players, 3 zerglings mean 50% faster baneling production. Then with the Baneling strain that leaps, if that's not game-breaking I don't know what is.
And now with those swarm hosts and lurkers, I feel that the Zerg race is fantastic at turtling, and that's a huge contrast with the Zerg in the first Starcraft. In fact, when I picked the swarm host strain that can tunnel to any spot that's covered in creep and chose the ability that enables their locusts to attack both air and land, defense felt so incredibly easy. I don't even need to place individual sets of defenses for every base, just a queen for each and a single army of swarm hosts.
But I've only played the campaign and I haven't even finished it, so this is just the impression I'm getting from playing in scripted battles.
No comments:
Post a Comment