Seems to me this method is patented. How are they going to sell these kits?
The Lyman extruder documents (including BOM and assembly and 3 view drawings) are published for free. The parts are easy to obtain.
How are you (the possible patent holder) going to stop individuals from sourcing the parts and building these machines?
The reprap machines are also, Im sure, violating multiple patents in the US. Go ahead and try to stop the international audience from furthering the science and art. I'll just use TOR and download the assembly drawings from evil foreign servers.
A whole class of patent holders are about to get napstered. Once you can simulate just about any electronic board with a RasPi for $25 and make just about any plastic part on your 3d printer, what good will a patent even be?
I'm making popcorn.
I also do casting, and natural PLA has a nice burnoff for it. I also have access to a metal lathe and a few other pieces of heavy equipment. I can make. out of junk and scrap, pretty much anything I want. My next work will be a CNC table using a mounted dremel (printed bracket, of course).
And some of people who know what I do already have asked "can I make them guns for them?". Yeah. I could do nice guns. Dont really care too much about 'vs human' and 'vs animal' ballistsics.
I'm also working on a cheap 3d scanner to feed fodder into my system :) Im sure I breaking copyrights AND patents, and maybe a few trademarks too.
"Patent", "Patented", "Pat.", "USPTO", "Proprietary", or "Protected" do not appear in the body of the article.
Also, there is this: "The first thermoplastic extrusion was in 1935 by Paul Troester in Germany." Looks like a decent prior-art claim.
I know it won't be a problem when people use this at home, but Lulzbot is going to sell assembled versions. I hope they don't get in trouble for that.