New Open Sourced Metal 3D Printer

Has anyone see this? A Man named Joshua Pearce is building an open source metal 3D Printer, which parts costs just under $1,500. Pearce is leading a team at the Michigan Technological Institution, and believes that this will see progress in it's abilities and price, similar to the open sourced plastic filament printers, the Repraps. It that';s the case, we will see substantial innovations in this area in a matter of months.

All the information you need to build this printer as well as the software needed to run it can be found for free here: http://www.appropedia.org/Open-source_metal_3-D_printer

Here is a look at the metal printed that has all open source design, and software:

http://www.3ders.org//images/3d-metal-printer-2.jpgc

How sturdy and hard is the metal in the objects that are printed? Is it capable of printing gears? I've seen a lot of 3D printers that say they can print in Metal, but what good is that if the metal is no stronger than plastic? I'd be curious to know what the strength of this metal objects that are printed is.

well its a mig welder with a stepper controlled table so the metal is going to be steel. there certainly wont be any kind of detail to the parts but it certainly is a start.

I am super excited about this printer. Best part is that it is completely open source, meaning we should see this thing get better and cheaper very quickly. This is exactly what the industry needs. Let's hope 3D Systems takes some tips used for building this printer to build their own at home metal printer. Metal makes so much more sense for so many more printed objects than plastic.

I kinda wish they would have done a crowdsourcing campaign for this printer. I would have backed it in a second if it were on Kickstarter or IndieGogo.

Seems like this could end up being the Metal version of the Reprap. Hopefully this will lead to more competition in the metal printing niche, and drive prices way down similar to the declines in prices we have seen in the plastic niche.

I like the idea, seems a cool idea to be able to make a solid metal object from a model on your computer at home, I can also imagine it being fairly easy to build out of scrap parts, so pretty cheap.

I can see a few variable that would need fine tuning whilst using it:
Wire speed, Torch movement speed, Gas flow*, Current and Arc gap.

Also you may have to use a shielding gas* with Gas wire, rather than just Gasless flux cored wire.
Having the ability to use a Stainless wire with the correct gas would be good for making potentially food safe items.

Another use is for Model engineers. Instead of buying and milling a big block of steel, they could make an oversized model of what they plan to mill, print it out then mill the print to the correct dimensions, this may save them the huge cost of milling a big block of steel, over the cost of filler wire.
Just an idea, either way I see it as a pretty fun looking project and can't wait to see more.

Tom.