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Input/Output
A New Dimension in 'Printing'
5/17/2007
inch at present. But you know that not only is the cost going to go down, but someone's going to come up with these things that you can feed ordinary stuff you find around the house into. I want one that I can feed mailed credit card offers into. I can imagine that little envelope-sized slot in the side.As for the $5,000 price tag, heck, I can remember paying $3,200 for a Radio Shack daisy wheel printer in 1984 or 1985. (I spent days figuring out how to trick it into printing out a bolded bullet using an early version of WordStar. Now I can buy a new inkjet printer that's faster and does a whole lot more for $60.
These 3D printers are going to be cheap, and they're going to be cheap very soon. Want a set of monogrammed forks and spoons for your wedding? Just drop some pellets of plastic (or last Sunday's New York Times) in the hopper, go on line and grab a fork and spoon design template, add in your monogram, press the button, and there you have them! When the wedding's over, drop them back into the hopper. Serious wow!
Can you tell I'm excited? I love visual imagery but I've never had any skills at all with pencil and paper, oils and canvas, or even knives and balsa wood. Personal computers, ink jet printers, and visually creative software have made me able to churn out some beautiful stuff in recent years. Now I will be able to make dinnerware, vases, small sculptures, and more.
But the real artists, the folks with real creativity and discipline, will still shine through. Maybe Nic's career will some day be to work at home producing designs for the 3D printers in people's homes. You'll be able to subscribe to "Designs by Nic" through iTunes and receive a daily or weekly download of templates to feed into your ... oh, heck, let's call them "replicators" or "fabricators," not "printers," okay? You'll be able to receive regular template downloads and print out the resulting objects for enjoyment for just as long as you want, then feed them back in for something new.
Prediction: These things are going to drive the intellectual property rights folks nuts. (My tiny little soapstone Inuit carving could be 3D scanned and replicated quite easily, for example.) And, within one model generation, the digital rights management people are going to find a way to screw up the functionality for us all. Sigh.
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About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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