From the beginning, I was intrigued by these new 3D printers that had come on the market. By 2005, they ranged in price from about $20k to somewhere in the millions. My needs were still rather simple, and it was clear that my designs could easily be produced on a printer in the lower end of that price range.
The local Stratasys representative was kind enough to run off a single piece of my prototype, in the hope of selling me a unit of the 3D printer that made it. The piece they made for me, pictured in Figure 3 on page 49, was quite the experience to see for the first time. I was impressed with just how much this piece of plastic resembled both the picture of it I had in my head and the visual representation of the piece in the Alibre CAD program.
Still, I was far from ready to put more money into the idea. Holding this small piece of plastic in my hand, however, gave me a few more opportunities to scrub the design. Feeling the edges, notches and holes gave me more hints about where the weaknesses were, certainly compared with the sense I was able to get from looking ad the CAD designs on a computer screen. I made a few more design adjustments and reconsidered the journey ahead, before making any more investments. I was looking for clues that this might be a stupid idea. I did not find any yet. For months, I chewed on the design in my head and in CAD. I revisited the CAD program several times a week, continued to read up on CAD to improve my grasp of the subject, and after several more months, I had stopped learning anything significant on the subject.
Ideas do not stay fresh forever, and I felt it was time to either set the whole idea aside or commit to the next stage.
Cost of this stage: $0. Costs so far: $800
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