ave you ever dreamed of having one of those replicators from Star Trek? Ever wanted to make just about anything at the flip of a switch?
Well guess what? You’re in luck, because in this Instructable I will show you how to make the closest thing to a replicator that current technology can manage; a 3D printer.
Wait a minute, isn’t there another Instructable on how to make a 3D printer from Legos? Yep, there is, but this 3D printer is different; it’s a polar 3D printer and it’s capable of printing out so much more than just chocolate.
Now at this point in the intro you’re probably thinking what do I mean by polar 3D-printer. Is it a 3D-printer that only works in the in the polar regions?
A polar printer is a printer whose principal axes, or how it can move, are radius(in and out), angle(spin clockwise/counter clockwise), and as opposed to a Cartesian printer whose principal axes are X(left/right), Y(up/down). In other words, it moves just like a polar coordinate system.
So why did I make a polar 3D printer instead of a good ol’ Cartesian 3D printer?
1. I didn’t have enough Legos to build a Cartesian printer.
2. I hope to eventually add a 3D laser scanner to it so I can scan in objects and send them to another printer somewhere else in world. Making sort of a ‘teleporter’.
(via Bruce Sterling)