I’m quite interested in this… in a tangential sort of way, because CNC fabbing makes “showpieces of skill” from yesteryear, downloadable and printable… for example $20,000 antique wooden watches from Russia
Could probably be designed in a CAD system, and fed to a CNC machine. Especially now gaps are being filled… hardware problems are being solved as software problems, eg: this online cog generator:
Which is not to say that Piers Secunda’s puzzle is part of this process – it is (I think) good old fashioned skill, honed over many years. But it’s only a matter of time.
I remember reading somewhere that you could theoretically recapture the sounds of ancient Ethiopia by getting an old Ethiopian pot and rotating it with an ancient Ethiopian’s finger retracing the movements the original one made when it was on the potter’s wheel… like a wheel-thrown pot could act like a giant wax cylinder.
This is like that. Is it? No. Not really. Oh well.
Cool though, in a 70s/60s paleo-non-futuristic sort of way.
The thing that took my head off about this isn’t the printer that the talk was about… but the day-job one that can do detailed 3D prints the size of dust motes. I mean the other printer is impressive… but nanometer-scale resolution? That’s insane.
Not sure what you’d do with it mind. Make tiny rubiks cubes probably.
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Anyway – today is day 2 of 2012, year of the Mayan Rapture, which may or may not just be an ancient millenium bug. It would be kindof appropriate to do a retrospective of 2011, and a forecast of 2012, but I’m too hung-over and confused and I’ve been hiding under the bed for the last 2 days. 2011 was a busy year. Not for me… for everyone else. Shit happened. A lot of it. But not the Christian Rapture. Obama declared Martial Law though… oh… hang on… no, that’s yesterday. 2012 has started already – and it’s showing every sign of turning into a massive fight. The most disturbing video I’ve seen this year so far is this one where Cory Doctorow talks about the coming war on General Computing.
3D Printed bits + aerospace fabric + A LOT of fiddley construction.
Really cool though because (as far as I can tell) it’s modular, so you could make smaller ones out of the same stuff. Or bigger ones… maybe. Or different shapes. Stick it up on kickstarter. You’ll make a million dollars.
Mind you, if I had a choice between the kite, and the lenses they used to shoot this video, I think I’d go for the lenses.
Initially I found Sugru to be quite annoying… not sure why. There was something a bit “yay” and “wow” about the way it was marketed… and I’m deeply suspicious of Hoxton types… I don’t know if the woman who made this is a Hoxton type, but the signs are there. Hoxton types made that little printer thing that looks a bit like hitler.
I’m just deeply suspicious of anyone trying to be “Passionate” about something they’re selling.
But then I bought some and it’s actually really useful. I’ve used it to replace all the rubber bits on my laptop that have gotten lost, as well as make this little thumb-guard thing to stop me accidentally hitting the touchpad, which was a real pain before. I’ve also used it for making a rubber foot for a clamp… for making golden mean calipers, and used it in place of heat-shrink on a cable that was always breaking. It’s weird stuff. Like blu-tak which turns into hard rubber.
Anyway, using a 3D printer to make molds is quite a neat idea… because it allows you to make a lot of very similar things very quickly. Which is pointing out the bleeding obvious I suppose… but it kindof bridges a gap. Not everything that we might want to make is a one-off. Things like candles or soap… or product-specific packaging… or toys… or… dunno. Art. Stuff gets interesting when you can do it big.
3D Printing looks like it might be becoming the New Lego… ie: sooner or later, everything has a 3D Printed variant… and you haven’t really “arrived” until someone has made you in Lego.
At least partly because this is 3D Printing, and I seem to recall ages ago mentioning that coil-pots are basically a 3D-Printing process… that whole history repeating thing. The quality of this is amazing. And you can do it too.
This is another example of just how fast technology is moving. The last examples of 3D printed pottery I posted here were these
It’s using one of those 3-armed robo-things that stack pancakes, but in reverse. Those are the things that I think repraps should be based on… once they’ve got their spacial calibration sorted out.
This guy’s made a really really high-res DIY 3D printing machine… looks like it prints from the bottom, rather than layering on top. All is not well in IP land with this one though – he says he’s going to a) release it as a kit but b) patent it… and there seems to have been some sort of fracas over the whole patenting notion. Intellectual Property in the shape of patents is a type of poison that contaminates everything that is built up on them… and if you’re not rich enough to take Exxon to court, what’s the point?
The video reminds me a bit of Russian Sci Fi nightmare Kin Dza-Dza – which is the Russian version of Morons from Outer Space wearing a Kafka hat. Frustrating bozons with power everywhere.
