Something Fun

This will be a deviation because I'm a abit weary of the doom and gloom. I need to go over some things that were previously mentioned anyway. So time for some fun.

3D Printing. You may have heard of it but lets pretend you haven't even if you have.

Almost everyone has seen Star Trek or is at least familiar with the concept of the Replicators within the show. If you aren't, then you are missing out. In short they are machines capable of creating objects from base elements on demand.

3D printing is the same concept however not currently as advanced. These machines take a material and build new objects out of the material from the ground up. I was going to embed a small GIF of this so you could see but Google is not cooperating so here is a link instead.

While 3D printing is amazing there are several downsides that exist.

One of the biggest ones is materials. Right you most 3D printers use resin a hard plastic like material , other machines exist that work with metals and even biological materials. The problem is you need a different machine for each type of material and this is exasperated by the fact that the machines are rather expensive. The other large barrier of cost has over the past several years has gone from being tens of thousands of dollars for even basic models to you can get an equivalent machines for only ~100$ today. So costs are coming down , but still rather high overall.

An advantage at least is on the software and computing side there has been a massive surge of support to the point of where even in Microsoft Windows 8 and higher you will find built in support for 3D printing.

Even with all of these limitations amazing things are currently being made daily with these devices. Some recent examples go with drugs , rocket engine parts, body parts, food, organs, and sadly even weapons.

As this technology becomes more accessible and advanced the decade old question of "would you download a car?" because less ridiculous when discussing piracy because well you could. In fact companies like GameWorks are already running into this. GameWorks produces figurines to be used in an assortment of manners but now you can just download the files to replicate these items at home with a 3D printer. So what happens when you can do this with almost anything?