Printing advances…

When I worked in IT support for E&Y in London in 1996… we received this package one day on it’s own specially built little wooden pallet. A COLOUR PRINTER!

From Apple. I unwrapped it, hefted it up onto a desk (it was about 80cm cubed, 20kg), plugged it in, and it didn’t go.

It didn’t go and it didn’t go and it didn’t go and it didn’t go.

Eventually we rang the hardware guru guy (who was so cool he wore a bow-tie (proper ties dangle in the wires etc)) and he told us that we’d voided the warranty just by taking it out of the box (only certified engineers were allowed to do this) and the reason it didn’t work was that there was a little tray of inks inside, and if they were tilted, they’d spill. He saved the day. He always did. It went.

That was my first colour printer – it cost something insane like 80 thousand quid, and the only thing it was ever used for was printing test-prints… little WWII british airplane insignias (the size of pennies) like the mods used to wear. I’ve probably still got them somewhere.

So…

Today we (humans) just printed a glass ring. A tiny step for mankind etc.

From the same source… apparently full colour 3D printing is now commercially available.

It’s creeping closer… I’ve always been a little skeptical – there is such a gulf between what is imagined and what is currently doable… but it is getting closer.

Apparently the $750 makerbots – the hobbyist level reprap style printers from… Makerbot are bringing in just under $120,000 a month which is… a lot. Is it? Seems like a lot, but then again, it’s only 5 a day and it’s not hard to imagine them going way above that… and the funny thing is, that I haven’t seen these things print anything remotely useful. The best has been salt shakers… which were kind of neat, but I’m also not sure that they aren’t way off the kitschometer as well.

Still, back to the colour printer at the beginning – that’s kindof where we’re at now I think. It took about 5 years to go from the 80,000 pound monolyth, to a flakey little box in my living room that cost less than its ink cartridges.

2015 then.