On 23/12/10 09:58, James Morris wrote: > > I very much doubt that printed ball bearings would work any better > than ball bearings made from scrunched up sellotape.
You can currently make things in metal (and glass, and rubber) using more expensive systems: http://www.shapeways.com/materials/ Even if the ball bearings example isn't technically convincing at present it is entirely possible to create objects with moving parts this way. I have a sample next to me: http://www.shapeways.com/model/133452/shapeways_materials_sample_kit.html 2D scanning and printing, as it were, are now pretty pervasive even if not in the way their earliest proponents thought it would be. Not everyone has a Xerox machine, but camera phones and inkjet printers are all over the place. For me the counter-examples to the 3D printing dream aren't so much premature technical claims as historical examples of companies like Sodastream and Polaroid who sold a kind of non-disruptive, non-self-sufficient last-stage-assembly fantasy of self-production as just another consumer experience. - Rob. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
