A bit of nostalgia for the old folks. 3-D Printing (old-style) Im trying to get my mind around the concept of 3-D printing. I kinda lost touch with the technology when my dentist stopped his subscription to Popular Science. Ive been hearing theyre printing spare parts on the space station. I imagine its a bit more difficult in zero gravity. The price is getting below $1000 for the printer, but given our history with InkJet refill cartridges, I can only imagine how much the refills will cost. I hope they chose a different pricing model. I had a 3-D printer when I was a kid; two, in fact. Thingmaker and Vacu-form. Ring any bells? With Thingmaker, youd heat up a metal plate with an intaglio bug in the matrix, then pour Plasti-goop(TM) into the recess. Wait a few minutes for it to gel, then unplug it and wait a long, long time for it to cool and set. Wait much longer than an eight year old could be reasonably expected to wait. Burn your fingers removing the plate. Stifle any cries or the toy would be confiscated until youre older (or you could buy it back at the next garage sale). If all went well, there would be a multicolored grossly oversized insect. More often, youd get part of a bug, with the antennae remaining in the mold. Still, these were useful for secreting into sandwiches at the lunch table. Whats worse than discovering a worm in your apple? Half a worm. The other one, Vacu-form, involved another high-intensity heater. No Easy-Bake lightbulb technology here. These got up to several hundred degrees. Take the raised mold of the race car with the tiny pinprick airhole and place it in the device over the suction pump. The sheet of colored plastic goes in the other side, over the heater. Wait until the plastic sheet is soft enough to burn a child or register an FBI-quality fingerprint. Grab the handle and flop the softened plastic over the mold, then pump furiously. The vacuum should in theory create a plastic sheet with a car-shaped bump in it. Again with the waiting. Eventually, the child should use his mothers good sewing scissors to gingerly cut the cooled flat remains away from the auto body. There is little room for error. Ideally, the auto body is then placed on top of one of the two auto chassis supplied with the kit. Note: if you acquire this set at a neighborhood garage sale from an angry mother and her weeping kids with gauze on their hands, these essential parts may be missing. Even under the best of circumstances, these Vacu-form cars will not beat a Matchbox car on a Hot Wheels track.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 23:12:24 +0000