How cool is this?A universal fabricator for the home for US$2400! This lets you "print" physical structures that would look similar to injection molded plastic.
Imagine being able to design 3d art or a gadget of whatever type on your computer, press 'go' and have it created as a physical item from one or more materials. Make a watch band, an instrument case, a box, a stand. While you might not make too many things that couldn't be created by hand, what an fantistic example of the amazing rate of technology change. Commercial versions of these machines cost $100K and up and tend to be in the hands only of specialist manufacturers.
Think about where this could get with more development. Cheap universal fabricators for all, sold in same way that desktop printers are sold today. Lots of materials. More sophisticated processes. Push button creation of new items that otherwise you'd have to buy from a shop. This could be as simple as:
- I need a watch band / piece of jewlery / part for the car / computer component
- Find one online
- Purchase the plan/recipe
- Start the fabricator
- Come back in an hour and it's ready to go!
Here's an example that might be closer in time. The rare car shop that today holds lots of rare stock could move to having a fabricator and be able to create parts on demand.
http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn10922-desktop-fabricator-may-kickstart-home-revolution.html
http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Update
- plaasjaapie has been good enough to point out a couple of other really interesting universal fabricator projects. RepRap and Tommelise. The anticpated cost for a RepRap machine is US$400 and Tomelise is aiming for a wooden construction with costs of US$150. Wow!
