Last Monday, a student at the University of Arizona, St. Louis used a 3-D Printer to print the same 3-D printer. The student, Eric Choe, is a young undergraduate student who spends his Friday Nights at the Architect building. “I didn’t even know you could do this, all I did was put the input from the user manual of the original printer and ta-da. It worked,” said Eric when asked about the event. His mentor, Professor Bobstein, said, “I wasn’t really surprised by this Eric’s discovery, he is a really innovative kid. He is always doing things we wouldn’t think of.”
Since then,, departments at other schools have been trying to use their 3-D printers to print a 3-D printer. Most have been unsuccessful. The conclusion behind the failures is that they don’t have the same brand of 3-D printer as the 3-D printer, Sony’s Print-well Model 743, at UA, St. Louis. So all these departments have returned their printers and purchase Sony’s Print-well Model 743. Sales have gone up from 15 every month, to 200 just this week! Sony is delighted by the attention this event has brought to its product.
The next step is running tests on the new 3-D printed printer and seeing if it can work and print properly. This will involve extensive testing and trials. The final test will be to see if the 3-D printed printer can print a 3-D printer. However the problem lies in whether or not the average initial cost of a 3-D printer is over $50,000, so this could potentially cut the costs into five percent of the price. This may be the future of 3-D printer. It may even drive Sony’s sales to the ground now that everyone may have access to the production of 3-D printers. Only the future will tell!