VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 09 2004 - 10:49:31 CST

Karsten,
  Though I don't personally have any significant involvement in
3-D printing other than writing and maintaining the VRML-2 and STL
scene exporters in VMD, I know that they are fairly complex devices
and they need more care and attention than most computer peripherals.
The 3-D printing equipment we use here is managed by an independent
group that provides services to the entire institute, billing each
department and research group for use. Since these 3-D printers typically
require a bit of expertise to run and maintain, and they tend to be
somewhat costly, getting one for shared use by many research groups
is probably the best way to go. I'd direct you to talk to the managers
of our facility here, but they are so overwhelmed with this kind of
email I fear they would not answer your question. You can see some of
the 3-D printing equipment our institute maintains here:
  http://www.itg.uiuc.edu/

They have a page for one of our older 3-D printers here:
  http://www.itg.uiuc.edu/vmil/equipment/genisys.htm

Hope that helps,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 03:30:25PM +0100, Karsten Suhre wrote:
>
> Dear VMD users,
>
> I was very impressed about VMD's capabilities to produce real 3-D protein
> models using a 3-D printer (as presented on the VMD home page as spotlight 4:
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/spotlight/).
>
> In order to investigate the possibility to buy such a printer at our
> institute, I would be pleased to hear more about other users' experience with
> this technique, i.e.
>
> * What would be a good printer for low-throughput applications (in fact, what
> would be the minimum amount of money to put up to obtain a reasonable
> solution)?
>
> * Or alternatively, does someone know about private companies that would be
> able to produce such protein models on command?
>
> Thank you very much for your comments,
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Karsten Suhre
>
> IGS-CNRS, Marseille, France. 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349              
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078