3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: !functionalprint@kbin.social or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
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But why?
It's a step in a new direction, a proof of concept. Maybe in the future something similar could be useful for road work or on mars or idk. No innovation & development without experimenting. You have to start somewhere and with stuff that is available.
And even if nothing comes of it, I bet it was a fun project to work on.
It could lead to a room size print bed, as in i wonder what the largest object it can currently make is.
Would also be neat if it could scan objects in the room as well, a lot more print in place capabilities with an idea like that.
Seems novel, but I agree with you, seems like it could lead to further neat innovation. Though it is pretty wild they chose a vacuum bot lol.
In engineering school we created a robot that does specific tasks for a contest. It was a lot of work, but that was the main goal. Using an existing device that already has a LIDAR (and probably SLAM) sounds like a very smart move to me, for a project where you want to focus on other problems that have no existing solution yet.