I love how these two stories landed on the same day.
First of all Staples has decided to start selling Cube 3D printers. I’m pretty disappointed that Cube was the first to the larger retail market, but I kinda knew they would be. They’ve got the PR machine, they’re playing all the right moves. Hopefully someone will find a way around their draconian filament chip. There’s already one solution, but I can see that one being fixed in a firmware update pretty quick. Tho I do appreciate the irony that the fix involves printing a part on the cube to hack it. That’s like being your own anesthesiologist for your appendectomy. Also hopefully this will open the way for other 3D printing manufacturers.
The next bit of news is that Defense Distributed has completed a fully 3D printed gun, sans the bullet, a nail for a firing pin, and a hunk of metal so it won’t go through metal detectors undetected. How many rounds will this fire? How accurate is it? How far will it fire? There are still many questions that aren’t be answered, but this is exciting. Yet another way that manufacturing is being decentralized. Granted it’s a politically charged way that many people freak out about and that generated hits on fear-mongering web sites. Well fear-monger away, I’m pretty excited by this.
