That Was Easy

Staples, the office supply retail chain, is planning to start selling replicators (ne "3D printers") in a couple of weeks.

Autodesk president and CEO Carl Bass...thinks mass production runs may soon go the way of the dodo. 3D printing, specifically, will evolve from rapid prototyping to limited production. Key to this transition will be software like Autodesk’s 123D Catch (or the like). “Just as rip-mix-burn became the anthem for digital music, we are starting to do the same thing for the physical world with capture-modify-print (or download-modify-print) using only the cameras on our cellphones to inform computer vision algorithms.”

Hoh-boy... the patent lawyers are about to get all hot and bothered.

For the next few years, it will remain a novelty technology for hobbyists in the home market, much the way personal computers were viewed in the 1970s. Devices capable of reproducing complex machines using a "point-and-click" interface are still a ways off. But it will happen. In the meantime, it would be pretty cool to visit a museum, use your smartphone to take pictures of the sculptures you like, then replicate them at home. Not particularly useful, but cool.

I can, however, see practical applications even at this level of technology -- if they get the price point down. For example, there's a drawer blind on the lower cabinets directly below the stovetop in our house. A few years ago, I knocked it off while cleaning and the little plastic clip thingy on one side broke. That thingy was a builder grade one-off; I can't find a replacement for it. I'd have to remove and replace the entire clip system with something different. So, being fundamentally lazy, I've just endured the blind dropping onto the floor (and scaring the piss out of everyone in the house) from time to time. Now if I had a replicator, I could just take pictures of the remaining clip and make a quick copy. Problem solved! But not for 1300 clams, thanks...