ConFigures

Personal manufacturing and Penguicon

When I lived in Rochester, NY, I gave small dinner parties occasionally.  Now that I live in the DC area, where all my “local” friends are distributed up to an hour away, I usually go out to meet them (dancing, for instance) instead.  But if I were to give a dinner party now, I’d like to end the meal with little homemade chocolate castles served on little personally-designed homemade chocolate dessert plates.

I could do it, too, if I got my own personal manufacturing device.  There are open source DIY home-fabber kits available now, cost of materials around $2500 (US):  they work on chocolate and icing!

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10922-desktop-fabricator-may-kickstart-home-revolution.html
“Malone and Lipson hope [http://www.fabathome.org/] will grow into a community of enthusiasts who share designs for 3D objects and even modify the machines for themselves.”

I know there are a number of potential sociological and economic impacts once home fabbing takes off, but I enjoy thinking on the smaller scale about home craft (and cookery) applications.

Somewhere in between nanotechnology precision and Fab At Home, there’s also a RepRap project out there too, but it looks like their device isn’t generally available quite yet, whereas someone is selling complete Fab At Home devices already (I’m sure it would be educational (and cheaper) to build one myself, but that would take me quite a bit longer to get around to).  I’m not sure yet what the other differences between the projects are.  Lucky me, I’ll get to see a RepRap presentation at Penguicon in April.