a machine any Shop can use
 

http://www.wimp.com/functionaltools/

you know you want one.

Now that's cool in my book. :D

Pretty sure I saw a video where Jay Leno has one in his garage for making obsolete parts for his many rare antique vehicles...

That is frikkin' cool!

Makes photocopying your butt at the office party obsolete.

Yup, you did. Here's the vid
http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/extras/articles/jay-lenos-3d-printer-replaces-rusty-old-parts-1/

It's amazing, but I'm a bit confused. What if the finished part or tool needs to be metal? You've still got to take the prototype to a machinist or foundry don't you? How is taking a copy of the original better than taking the original? The D Valve thing Leno had in his video could be scanned and replicated in plastic, but wasn't it an engine part? In plastic?

With "3D printing" you can prototype inexpensively for "fit" and then have the project sent over to CNC, casting or whatever. There are businesses where you can email your design and they will send you back the prototype in about a week. Model makers love it.

Z-corp's printers suck. I prefer Dimension's DST rapid prototype printer.It uses an ABS build material and a dis solvable support material. A lot more durable than Z-corp's powder and binder crap.

The scanner and printer Leno had now resides at the prototype lab I used to work at. Jay signed both of them for us.

How does the scanner know what's inside? How does it see what it can't see? How does it know whether a wheel is fixed to an axle or rotates independently? How? How? How?

Sixto
87 300D

Its not Star Trek until it can make a lug bolt that will withstand a user standing on a breaker bar trying to loosen it =)

it doesn't. The scanner just gets the exterior contours and features. That data is then brought into a CAD program and worked on from there. I spent 6 hours trying to figure out how to use the scanner and I could never get a complete 100% scan. It couldn't get all the contours and shapes of the sample part it came with.

Picard: Computer - cylinder head, OM603, -22 casting.

Sixto
87 300D

Very cool, as usual Jay Leno has one and its really neat.

I have the laser scanner on my desk at work and a better 3D printer in our mech lab. He used it as a wrench but its just plastic. the scanner looks cool but dont be fooled, they chose that wrench because it was fairly simple, and there was a lot of data massaging they did not show to get it ready for the printer, to be honest I seriously doubt they used the scanned data in the end, likely they remodelled it and overlayed the scan to check surfaces as it was a very simple model