interesting article on 3d printing and modelmaking

This stuff is  only cheap in comparison to the older methods of designing, making a die and then molding the stuff.  Rapid prototyping, great.  Production runs, not so hot.  

True enough Chuck but how many people are going to want a LO&S self-propelled Gas doodlebug like they run at Strasburg at the same time I want mine? And if they did I could offer them the file so they could print it for themselves 3 years down the road or they could modify the file to make the car as it was when it ran on the Grasse River RR or the Wolfsboro RR.

Or 3d print the mold master and cast by the hundreds!  Russ

J Leno bought a 3-D printer several years ago for his car museum. He swears by it and the time and money it saves.

We have a number of these at work.  We needed some simple plastic parts for replacing ones that were broken off of some collapsible display easels.  We had trouble ordering replacements from the importer so we asked about using the $500k "printer" to make the replacements.  Because they use very specially ground plastic, it would have cost us $600 for each piece in materials alone.   None of the printers we had access to could make useable parts at a price we could afford, aka even the cheapest unit's output cost more than replacing the entire easel.  We were finally able to get the parts for about $5.50 each by special ordering with a "retail distributor".  

There are a lot of 3D lithography technologies out there and the costs are coming down.  The devices are still cranky, they are not easy to maintain, and the cost of the materials is not cheap.  I don't see these becoming common place for making things as large as an HO scale model let alone O for quite a while.

Chuck,

MTH has one and they make and an entire engine before production starts. I saw some of the engines in plastic on the OGR tours

Until the Star Trek "Replicator" comes out I say go for it!!!

I've seen small parts made using these things and they looked pretty good.

The more these types of machines are used the quicker the costs will come down and the technology will get better as time progresses.

Technology to do this does exist.  It's still expensive.  You don't (and you won't any time soon) see MTH using their Rapid Protoyping equipment to mass produce parts.  The $500k printer at work can produce parts of a size up to a first gen diesel in O scale.  It would just cost about $10k to do so.