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Old 12th Feb 2014, 09:40
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Chu Chu
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Virginia
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I have to share folks' skepticism. 3-D printing plastic is a fundamentally different process than injection molding. Instead of filling a steel die with molten plastic, you're depositing it drop by drop. Since (most) plastic is homogeneous, you end up with (about) the same product, without the need to machine an expensive steel die.

But to "print" a CF part that's similar in properties to a conventional one, you'd need to lay fibers in the same places and in more-or-less the same order. The printer's just automating the same process that might originally have been done manually. But it's hard to believe there aren't robots doing that already for a lot of parts -- they just aren't called 3-D printers.
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