On Mon, 7 Dec 2020 13:31:18 +1000 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
On 2020-12-07 12:24, Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 wrote:
On Sun, 6 Dec 2020 21:13:55 -0500 to make your own 3d printer you need to first make your own computer(s). In other words, if you don't want to buy your 3d printer from govcorp you need your own IC manufacturing plant.
While Intel looks rather married to the government these days, the corporations that build 3d printers and build the computer chips for them are generally not.
on the printer's side all you need is a small microcontroller and some power transistors...if you drive the thing using a bigger computer. You do need the bigger computer to run whatever CAD program you use anyway. But if you want a 'standalone' printer that can 'print' directly from data in a sd card, then I guess you'd need a better microcotroller. so yeah on one hand you don't need the latest intel workstation 32-cores super processor for a 3d printer but on the other, even simple microcontrollers are pretty specialized devices.