shennong posted:

LandBeluga posted:

shennong posted:
in the post-scarcity world i will have a tiny oil derrick in my bedroom pumping crude to a tiny plastic feedstock plant which will supply my 3d printer

"It doesn't matter because Collapse."

can you print thermoplastic starch? ima grow bioplastic feedstock, i need to replace the rollers in the dishwasher. restayall can starve

Yes, actually.

tpaine posted:
MY CALIPERS

shennong posted:

Squalid posted:
When will it be cheaper to keep one of these things lying around along (with other weird expensive sounding shit like 3d scanners and digital calipers (???)) than just buying a new blender? Keep in mind I couldn't build a bird house on my own let alone retro-engineer a piece of machinery, so if it requires any skill or effort beyond googling design specs id prolly just shell out for replacement parts from the manufacturer.

I can think of scenarios in which these things become useful for small specialty shops but it seems super optimistic to imagine a little microfactory in every garage.

a pair of calipers is like $40, pirated CAD is free, learning how to use it might take someone a week or two but its not like everyone in every community has to be an engineer

the economics are already there actually, the rollers in my parent's dishwasher actually did need to be replaced the other day and the company wanted $300 for the entire rail/roller assembly. if there'd been someone down the street who could print the roller for $5 i would have gone that route (ended up getting a $20 subassembly from a parts company shipping out of the same warehouse the $300 assemblies were shipping from lol). 3d printing will probably play a significant role in salvage economies imo

That makes sense, but if you are printing copies of a product for resale you could much more easily get in trouble for stealing intellectual property. Going back to the example of Warhammer brand dolls for grownups, we'll never see a shop printing exact copies of Warhammer toys, because they would instantly be sued out of business. Although I guess I can imagine some runarounds like allowing customers to print their own stuff and denying responsibility for any infringement committed by customers. Still enforcement of intellectual property laws will be a lot easier if the lawyers just have to hassle one 3d xerox center as opposed to every house on the block, which makes the argument for saving money with one of these things a lot weaker, imo

edit:

http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/6/Tools/MeasuringTools/SpecialtyMeasuring/PRDOVR~0586800P/Mastercraft+Digital+Caliper.jsp?locale=en

oh I guess I've seen those things before. Never touched one tho

Edited by Squalid (April 25, 2012 21:29:43)

Squalid posted:

shennong posted:

Squalid posted:
When will it be cheaper to keep one of these things lying around along (with other weird expensive sounding shit like 3d scanners and digital calipers (???)) than just buying a new blender? Keep in mind I couldn't build a bird house on my own let alone retro-engineer a piece of machinery, so if it requires any skill or effort beyond googling design specs id prolly just shell out for replacement parts from the manufacturer.

I can think of scenarios in which these things become useful for small specialty shops but it seems super optimistic to imagine a little microfactory in every garage.

a pair of calipers is like $40, pirated CAD is free, learning how to use it might take someone a week or two but its not like everyone in every community has to be an engineer

the economics are already there actually, the rollers in my parent's dishwasher actually did need to be replaced the other day and the company wanted $300 for the entire rail/roller assembly. if there'd been someone down the street who could print the roller for $5 i would have gone that route (ended up getting a $20 subassembly from a parts company shipping out of the same warehouse the $300 assemblies were shipping from lol). 3d printing will probably play a significant role in salvage economies imo

That makes sense, but if you are printing copies of a product for resale you could much more easily get in trouble for stealing intellectual property. Going back to the example of Warhammer brand dolls for grownups, we'll never see a shop printing exact copies of Warhammer toys, because they would instantly be sued out of business. Although I guess I can imagine some runarounds like allowing customers to print their own stuff and denying responsibility for any infringement committed by customers. Still enforcement of intellectual property laws will be a lot easier if the lawyers just have to hassle one 3d xerox center as opposed to every house on the block, which makes the argument for saving money with one of these things a lot weaker, imo

printing a plastic part to refurbish a broken item isnt the same as printing a warhammer fig dude

an american embryo at just 4 days old

Yes. A 4-day-old embryo which is composed of thousands of cells is only 40 microns across. Jesus, at least make your lazy trolling have some semblance of scientific accuracy. Unfuckingbelievable.

4dpf human embryos are ~10 cells and about that size actually

The future of 3D printing is gonna be sorta like that of media and software piracy.
Once you get the printer and everything, all you need is the schematic and you can pretty much print whatever the fuck you want. There will be databases and search engines like The Pirate Bay full of schematics for all kinds of shit and you can just run a search, download it and print whatever you want.

actually, its illegal to print space marine terminators, sooo...

shennong posted:

Squalid posted:

shennong posted:

Squalid posted:

When will it be cheaper to keep one of these things lying around along (with other weird expensive sounding shit like 3d scanners and digital calipers (???)) than just buying a new blender? Keep in mind I couldn't build a bird house on my own let alone retro-engineer a piece of machinery, so if it requires any skill or effort beyond googling design specs id prolly just shell out for replacement parts from the manufacturer.

I can think of scenarios in which these things become useful for small specialty shops but it seems super optimistic to imagine a little microfactory in every garage.

a pair of calipers is like $40, pirated CAD is free, learning how to use it might take someone a week or two but its not like everyone in every community has to be an engineer

the economics are already there actually, the rollers in my parent's dishwasher actually did need to be replaced the other day and the company wanted $300 for the entire rail/roller assembly. if there'd been someone down the street who could print the roller for $5 i would have gone that route (ended up getting a $20 subassembly from a parts company shipping out of the same warehouse the $300 assemblies were shipping from lol). 3d printing will probably play a significant role in salvage economies imo

That makes sense, but if you are printing copies of a product for resale you could much more easily get in trouble for stealing intellectual property. Going back to the example of Warhammer brand dolls for grownups, we'll never see a shop printing exact copies of Warhammer toys, because they would instantly be sued out of business. Although I guess I can imagine some runarounds like allowing customers to print their own stuff and denying responsibility for any infringement committed by customers. Still enforcement of intellectual property laws will be a lot easier if the lawyers just have to hassle one 3d xerox center as opposed to every house on the block, which makes the argument for saving money with one of these things a lot weaker, imo

printing a plastic part to refurbish a broken item isnt the same as printing a warhammer fig dude

This sums up a lot of stuff i was gonna post but here's some other stuff



3d printing is basically useless for anything but ragged prototyping and replacing non wearing parts in stuff. could it make repairing first-out-of-production late model cars and gadget parts much easier? for sure. But will it revolutionize the world? no, because to do anything at scale it's worthless, and the way standard 3d printers accrete materials causes inherent weakness, not including the 3d printers that use metal that are leagues out of the average person's budget and probably will remain that way, like serious machine tools.

discipline posted:

plastic is bad for the environment

you could use plastic derived from wood derived from sustainable forestry, if you wanted to

1488 posted:

Superabound posted:

Hurricane_Faggot posted:

Superabound posted:

keep in mind that this technology will very soon be used to print circuit boards

that's kind of iffy at best. the best that things like the reprap or the makerbot can do right now is milling out the copper traces or using a sharpy as an etch resist but even then the circuit board density is fairly low.

ok now imagine its 50 years from now

does technology necessarily advance with time?

it's your topic mang