Plastic in the Afterlife

Ever since I learned of 3D printing technology I have been in disbelief. And now that I have spent some time with an adorable little 3D printer in action I not only believe, I am a full on convert! So the way it works is you create a coded file of the object you want, feed it into the little printer, the printer melts and shoots a spool of material (colored plastic! which, after my inquiry, we all discovered does in fact come in glow in the dark!!!!!) onto a platform given your specifications and there is your little three dimensional entity! Immediately upon seeing it Brent sprang into action insisting that glasses should be made for his piece (which needs to be viewed through a polarized lens in order to see the images on the screens, piece in progress pictured at left! photo by Brent Green)...I really want to make a polarized monocle I can wear around my neck so I will be able to see the animation on the ghostly LCD screens at any moment... or a monocle on a ring...or just plain rings...or shower curtain rings, or a ring to hold my kitchen measuring cups together or a replacement handle for that broken knife in the kitchen or a replacement part for just about anything for that matter....absolutely addictive!

 So...we learned this week that one should never own a Makerbot! You never knew you needed lots of little things made out of plastic until the possibility of immediate object creation presented itself!