Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/20/revenge-of-lego-bridge.html
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“Inches,” you say?
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That video was, like, the antithesis of coherent and watchable editing. I love the subject matter, but fuck whoever at mashable made that smelly dog-corpse of an edit.
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12 meters? That’s nothing, I built a bridge that was over 120 meters long, in Minecraft.
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Previously, on questionable material choices: https://boingboing.net/2015/06/16/dutch-company-plans-to-3d-prin.html
“Sintered stainless steel” does not sound like something that one would use to create anything other than a novelty bridge.
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I wonder also at it’s cost compared with just about any other material.
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I’m sure it’s nice as a proof of concept… but building a bridge entirely out of steel, with powdered steel, that has to be 100% sintered (thx for word, 7lions) into a usable object is obviously a huge waste of - well - everything really; energy, effort, raw materials, time, too.
And really, why ‘stainless steel’? It can and will still rust and corrode if not treated, sealed and checked and double checked again time after time, all for a great increase in cost… so why?
While we’re at it, maybe could have used titanium, tungsten, platinum for this power consumption monstrosity.
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And then just as they’re about to test the finished bridge…
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The finish texture sure looked uneven and bumpy, not smooth like most of the stainless steel one normally encounters. All that surface area with nooks-n-crannies has got to make it much more likely to corrode, right?
And yeah, the video. Woof.
It’s not sintered. It’s welded. It’s using a bog standard arc welder on the arm. The new part of having the arm move along the structure, and having the arm not just weld two existing pieces together, but instead make new material.
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Interesting. I was just going off the BB article, which referred to sintering stainless. But a quick review of the MX3D site (not Mix3D, which is a different entity) shows that you’re exactly correct. Not only is it a COTS welder, it’s a COTS robot, too. The innovation that MX3D advertises is software and system design.
That actually makes it way more exciting to me. There are a ton of people saying “I can do this cool thing once I make/find/wish for this very special thing that doesn’t exist.” It’s more fun to say “Hey y’all, look what I can do with the same tools you have!”
I’m still not super sure how I feel about a bridge made entirely of stainless weld-bead, but it’s much better than a sintered bridge!
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