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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/14/09
12/14/09
I believe the brain for the cupcake cnc (maker 3d printer) is the brain developed for the Reprap.
Notice on this page at makerbot.com it lists the reprap motherboard:
[store.makerbot.com]
12/13/09
12/13/09
Let's face it, all I can think of making is sex toys and model Gundams. I wish I didn't kill my imagination in High School.
12/12/09
12/13/09
12/13/09
Person A: "Jobs are being lost man"
B: "Yea dude its devastating"
A: "Poor chinese people... not manufacturing shit anymore... i just use my printer at home"
B: "Oh your talking about people overseas? pshhht fuck those guys."
12/14/09
12/14/09
12/14/09
12/14/09
I was just kidding. But, really, I don't think technology can ever be blamed, in the long run, for large-scale job loss. Sure, mechanizing the construction of the automobile took a lot of labor out of human hands, but the auto-industry wouldn't exist without the ability to mass-produce on the cheap. Last time I checked, Aston Martin still does everything by hand, and they don't produce very many cars, and those cars aren't exactly bargain buys. Also, they don't employ very many people.
I think it's an awful leap to say this extremely expensive piece of machinery, whose function is to print three-dimensional renderings in plastic, is going to take jobs away from anyone. It's a designer's tool for quickly creating prototypes to test and share. If it does, in some future happenstance, invade our homes, its main facility will probably be printing hideous clipart dalmatians for your kids to coo at and then throw away.
And anyway, I'm sure, somewhere out there in the sea of ungodly, sweaty, dirty, and dangerous industries, there's gotta be another one we can dump on the Chinese if the bottom falls out of the whole plastic racket.
12/14/09
You say this device is expensive and will only be used to make little toys but you lack longterm perspective. The ENIAC was the size of the room, extremely expensive, and only did very basic calculations. Now I have the world at my fingertips on my 5 pound computer.
Yes, jobs will not end anytime soon but jobs will shift and jobs will be lost. As technologies like this advance, many fields of work will end. And I really cant see billions of people working in the technology field... and society can't have billions of people jobless therefore Marxism will become the only option.
Kinda ranty and I digress but w.e.