The family got a new toy this week. A 3-D printer. So far we’ve made a weird circle thing and a tiny robot. The kids (and the adults) are quite fascinated. I imagine this will be like the VCR was to my generation. “Wow, you can just record a show and you don’t have to watch it while it’s on? FUTURE WORLD!”
I can see my kids telling their children about being one of the first houses on the block with a 3-D printer. “And it took one hour to print something an inch tall!” The youngsters will roll their eyes and say, “What’s the point in that? Now we just press buttons and get what we want in 5 minutes. Oh, by the way, I need some new shoes. Purple please. Punch in code S34.”
I bet you’re thinking that if you had a 3-D printer, you’d make all kinds of things – but would you? Now that we have one, I can’t think of anything. Seems easier to just go get a bracelet at the store instead of waiting 4 hours to make one in the printer. But what do I know? I still read actual books. I’m quite behind the times.
My boyfriend built a 3d printer about 2 years ago and has spent most of the last two years trying to get it to work properly ( It keeps ending up decalibrated and doing weird stuff). However, when it has been working we’ve made loads of coasters, a plastic tidy for the washing up implements that *exactly* fits the ones we have, a new shower holder-upper (if you get what I mean) and the parts to upgrade his 3d printer to a better one. We’re going to print some stampers for art -stuff. However, to be honest, it *hasn’t* been as useful as we thought it would be (the boyfriend would disagree but he’s biased!)
Yeah, we’ve got 2 half-made robots now. It will take a while to get the hang of this. I thought about coasters too. And great idea with the shower holder-upper! I’m actually using a clamp right now that keeps falling off. Stamps are great too. Thanks for the good ideas. Yeah, I don’t think it’s useful, but it’s a nice toy. I could probably sit the kids in front of it for an hour and they’d be happy to just watch it work. 🙂
cool technology !
It’s amazing to think how it will develop in the future. Right now I’m afraid most of our friends are going to be getting home-made 3D gifts for a while. 🙂
hahahahaha… well, you can’t let that ginchy technology go to waste, right ??? 😀
I will make enough coasters and bracelets to pay for this machine! 🙂