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The Modern Ease of 3D Printing
An anonymous reader writes "What will it mean when 3D fabricators become cheap and common? A NY Times article explores the ease of copying objects by scanning them with NextEngine scanner and sending them to 3d 'print shops'. The experiments were done with Legos because most of the things around his office were protected by copyright. What will happen to the economy for engineering when we can just download a pirated description of a machine and 'print' it out? 'The world is just beginning to grapple with the implications of this relatively low-cost duplicating method, often called rapid prototyping. Hearing aid companies, for instance, are producing some custom-fitted ear pieces from scanned molds of patients. Custom car companies produce new parts for classic cars or modified parts for hot rods. Consumer product makers create fully functional designs before committing themselves to big production runs.'"
"one trick for making models of dark shiny objects is to coat them with a cloud of white powder"
Great, so now when I'm in the tech room doing blow and the boss walks in I'll have a reasonable excuse: I'm prototyping my nose for a prosthetic. Never mind that not even a disfigured maxillofacial surgery patient would want my nose, but hey, the boss doesn't know that.
I hate printers.
Great! I bagsies the first one to make a life size anatomically correct Jenna Jameson
The NextEngine scanner can only do 6" scans, so we Canadians will have to wait a few more years before desktop penis scanning is the norm.
Trolling is a art,
In most cases, from the examples I've seen, the rapid prototyping tools can't currently create a durable item
From my purchasing experiences in the past decade, it seems most items are not durable anyway. ;-)
-InnerWebFreud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Good God, think of the paper jams. They're bad enough now, but imagine having to sit there picking pieces of a blender out of the printer ...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
They'd... make armies of half-man, half-flies?
I think the first thing I'll be printing is the lost battery covers to all my remote controls.
Here is my home page.