"CNC is all about amortization of the overhead and setup costs over the production population (and so is printing or virtually anything in mass production).  I, too, have been flabbergasted at some of the stuff coming out of China and selling…"

"Here's a video of the process: "

"Ok, so it almost sounds like the output is similar to a sand casting, requiring finish machining at the end, which is not bad.  What's the physical properties like?  Is this a sintered powder metal process, or something else? @Todd,…"

"I watched their printing process from a link that Global Spec sent me some time back.  Pretty cool.  Has anyone done a cost benefit analysis of 3D metal printing to CNC machining, or metal casting?   "

"Yep, but it's very crude, with a resolution in the millimetres.  Their stated rule is 3mm wall thickness.  It's very crude.  No where neat the resolutions of the renderings above."

"They can print stainless steel now?!?!"

"They've been rejecting some of my other models lately, that have printed successfully before that were just under tolerance.  I think they do that when you print small parts that are part of other batches.  They don't want…"

"Can you print me a rocket nozzle with regenerative cooling in SS? :)"

"It should be printable. there 3mm rule only applies to thin long parts because in the 'green state' it is very brittle like uncured clay.i will post some pictures as soon as i get them"

"They want to have 3mm minimum thickness on all printed parts!  Things are going to get heavy fast in stainless steel."

"256 pixels at 10ksps ~40Hz as long as we stay well below 40Hz as pulse frequency it might work we could look for a long time maybe several seconds at the same spot and look for the blinking light. we know the position relative to t-10s very…"

"Gareth Rens; well you cant tell the lengh of light beam that easily, we would have to use ultrasound for that we can get the position withing +-5m via GPS, then we have the light finder seeing the light from the charging station. that means we need…"

"we would be looking at the ground so we are only seeing reflected light that should give us a few order of magnitude. we could restrict the field of view to make sure the sun is not in there a 1W LED at 5m might do it, what do you think?"

"never mind the IR idea, the sun put outs more energy at that range then the visible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png what is the wavelenght/sensitivity of the camera?"

"Gareth Rens; yes thats perfect would this sensor be able to distinguish a bright IR led from the noisy light in outdoor condition? maybe we could pulse the light source and that would eliminate false positives in a noisy enviroment"