{"id":789,"date":"2011-12-31T14:41:59","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T14:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/?p=789"},"modified":"2011-12-31T14:41:59","modified_gmt":"2011-12-31T14:41:59","slug":"3d-printing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/?p=789","title":{"rendered":"3D Printing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>3D printing is an exciting new technology. But I wonder what it might be used for, in practice? I&#8217;m sat here in the sitting room in my father&#8217;s house, and I struggle to see many things that could be readily produced using such technology. The room contains:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Large items of furniture, too large for this technology to produce\n<\/li>\n<li>Complex technological items like a laptop and a television, too complex to be created using 3D printing<\/li>\n<li>Lots of newspapers, books and magazines. These could be readily printed using 2D printing technology. If I were to invest in a technological replacement for these, it would be an iPad or similar.<\/li>\n<li>Several plants. Several craft items, like vases and knitted decorations. Dried flowers. I could imagine that it might be possible to create some interesting ornaments and vases using this kind of technology, but less so the complex craft objects: but, it might be possible to create some of the supporting tools (e.g. knitting needles) using such technology.<\/li>\n<li>Clothes, pairs of shoes, etc. Probably not readily creatable using that sort of technology.<\/li>\n<li>A christmas tree and decorations. Probably all rather creatable using 3D printing, even the (plastic) tree.<\/li>\n<li>Mugs, glasses, plates. Don&#8217;t know; might need very specialised materials.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, this is hardly the point. The excitement is about creating <em>new<\/em> kinds of things that couldn&#8217;t be bespoke-built before; furthermore, there are clear applications in specific work environments such as laboratories and rapid-prototyping. But, I do worry that in the domestic environment this is just a sophisticated way of creating some fancy jelly-moulds and ice-cube trays. Is this destined to be the Breville toastie-maker of the 21st century?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>3D printing is an exciting new technology. But I wonder what it might be used for, in practice? I&#8217;m sat here in the sitting room in my father&#8217;s house, and I struggle to see many things that could be readily produced using such technology. The room contains: Large items of furniture, too large for this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[22,20],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinjohnson.me.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}