Top 10 Breakthrough Products of 2013 from PW

Hello fellow Taco owners, thought I'd share this from Popular Mechanics. Some really cool stuff. I really like #10.

Top 10 Breakthrough Products of 2013

Enjoy!

 

Man that never wet stuff seems like it could be very useful

 

That stuff is awesome! I played with it at Home depot not long ago. Cinder blocks that never got wet and kept the water contained.

 

Yea I might pick some up just to mess around with it myself

 

I want a desktop milling machine and rapid prototyper.

 

Yea that thing was pretty dang cool too. 1500 not too bad for what it is I guess.

 

The rapid prototype machines are cool because they can make things like a steel bumper for instance as one single piece. Set it to go before bed and by morning you have a bumper. You could make a bolt instead of going to buy one. And they have proven it's as strong or stronger than subtractive manufacturing.

 

If you're gonna be making bumpers out of plastic I guess a rapid prototyper would be cool

 

They have anything from rubber to plastic to wood to steel to titanium for rapid prototyping
Fun fact is if we find out we can colonize mars, they want to send up rapid prototyping robots to build the city from scratch. A full house was prototyped on earth and someone lives in it.

 

I didn't think laser deposition (metals) fell into rapid prototyping but now that I think about it I don't know why not.

I've seen the laser deposition machine in one of our research labs that can do metals... kinda works like a welder I guess it uses a powderized form of whatever metal you're using then shoots it through a nozzle that also has a laser on it. The laser melts the powder when it hits the mount and it then just is a 3D printer from there. I could never hope to even afford time on it, much less buying one for myself. It's sweet to watch (time lapse of course, it's boring as fuck in real time). They have all kinds of cool shit, we have the largest friction stir welder in the country (maybe the world, not sure) in the same area and a cold spray machine (basically shoots tiny powder at a surface so hard that it bonds to the surface and can be built up)

 

That sounds awesome. You must see really interesting stuff at work. What field do you work in??