Ok this is the coolest robot ever (see the picture to the right) from Makerbot Industries; they are giving the presentation right after lunch. The previous speaker pretty well bombed based on the twitter feedback and other communications channels that are letting the world know how Gnomedex is going.
The device is a 3D printer, you send it a STL file and then it prints it out as a 3D object. This is the first time I have ever seen a 3D printer so this is pretty cool. What is neat about this is that it is portable; it fits into a standard travel case. So much for room sized laser based 3D printers. You can purchase the kit and built it yourself from the Makerbot web site.
You can use images from the Google Image Warehouse, when there is no copyright involved with any of the images. While the objects are things like boxes and heads, you could probably build something more useful like a cup. It uses cheap plastic as the base, and keep on printing them until you have all the objects that you want. They are pretty thin, but still pretty cool as you can see from the picture below.
3D printing for home and office use, this just has all the applications you can think of. Thinking just about anything that needs to be built as a model will work, and it also might work for some of the more simple products like cups, plates, and other things we use like forks. The video being played shows the printer being used to print off company’s products as a toy and then off to printing. The Makerbot video is below from YouTube.
This was a cool presentation and totally awesome to see home made 3D printers that you can build in your house. You can also share your own design files and pictures onto Thingiverse. This way you can share the design and get a lot of feedback from people to test the viability of a product using people who visit Thingiverse.
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(Cross-posted @ TechWag)
[...] of the trends it mentions is 3D printers – it reminded me of a presentation made by MakerBot at Chris Pirillo’s Gnomedex conference in Seattle (you can watch the video here). Gnomedex 10 [...]