Remember those coin-operated machines at the zoo? You’d drop your coins in the slot, press the button and 90 seconds later a plastic dolphin or dinosaur would drop into the tray, still slightly warm. They probably had a different name for those machines years ago but now they’re being called 3-D printers and you can have your very own:3-D printers can take blobs of plastic and shape them into almost any object you desire. Now, thanks to open source hardware designs and enthusiastic do-it-yourselfers, these printers are increasingly popular and accessible. People are using them to fabricate iPod docks, plastic bracelets, hair clips and miniature teapots at home. The latest is Makerbot, a 3-D printer that started shipping in April and has sold more than 200 machines.
Because the Makerbot is open source, many of the designs for the objects are available online, and users can download and modify them.
~Wired
Of course, I’m not sure why you would need a miniature plastic tea pot, but then, I really didn’t need that plastic dolphin either.
1 comment:
You need a miniature teapot and 8 miniature tea cups and a miniature creamer and a miniature sugar bowl so you can have a tea party with your neices! Duh!
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