Exprexxo Thoughts

There are no S's in Exprexxo!

Thursday, January 01, 2015

Santa stuffed a 3D printer down our chimney

Classically that would be amazing: If Santa wanted to upgrade his productivity to deal with  the doubling of houses he has to visit since 1959, he could give each house a 3D printer and re-train the Elves to use CAD and then have toy cars and dolls start printing at midnight on the 25th.

But what happened here was, my Aunt captured the true spirit of Christmas by sending us a 3D printer with no markings of whom it was from.  We all had that childhood glee of the unknown that had not happened for each of us since we were very young. There it was a da Vinci XYZ printer ready to print anything we sent it.  And the internet is full of object files.  So we sent it a ring, an elephant, a lion, an iphone case, a key ring, and a game character.   Some worked, some failed, all taught.

So now each day we think:  What are we going to print?  And I look at my HP paper 'mult-function device'  and see where this all could lead.  In some years you could have a real 'multi-function-device' in your home that is capitalized by Amazon and Walart and their suppliers.  One that could print plastic, and metal, and glass at fine resolution and understandable speed. So then I decide to make you a gift and I send it to your 'address'.  Or you create a blog post for "I need a thing that does XYZ, willing to pay $50 to the first person who can deliver it". Or .....{your imagination goes here}.  If we can abstract the manufacturing from the design from the inspiration, well, things will be showing up everywhere.

So Santa, before you invest in a new Space-sleigh to deliver gifts to people on Earth and Mars,  how about you deliver a 3d printer to everyone?  It would reduce the need to ship finished mass and would reward the creativity of everyone.   "not a creature was stirring not even a mouse, (well except for the 3d printer of course) ...."