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Your phone can now run a 3D printer

I'm waiting till I can use my phone to make another phone on the 3D printer.

Or better yet, use the 3D printer to make another 3D printer.
 
People do upgrade their 3d printers with parts made from said printer. It's almost a right of passage as a new owner.
 
But when the printer can upgrade itself, that's when we should start worrying?

B.O.R.G. printers, self-replicating technology....what could possibly go wrong?
 
It depends on what it does. If it upgrades itself to be a better printer, that's good. If it upgrades itself to kill the meatbags, that's bad (for the meatbags).
 
If the printer spits out a document saying "hey baby, you wanna kill all humans?", then you have to disable self-upgrades....if you can.
 
Wait, what the hell? My phone could run a 3D printer six years ago.

All you need is a profoundly simple program that converts a 3D model into instructions for the printer. Any of those can run on phones without much trouble. The earliest I found that could run on my phone is from 2009. It is made to operate a home-made 3D printer that you can first print yourself on the same printer.

Now, if only I could run Blender to make the models on a phone... Wait, that has been been done back in 2010.

Oh, you're talking about 3D scanning, and not 3D printing, so even the title didn't have the courtesy to match the content of the thread. Well, you got me there. That I couldn't do on my phone until 2013.

---
ETA: Here's my frustration with the OP. I am quite excited about 3D printing, which is without a doubt paving the way for some kind of revolution in manufacturing. Who knows where it goes... Just deploy some intelligent garbage processing robots, and the long-repeated proverb of "Garbage In, iPhone out" may finally become literally true, solving two of the world's problems at once. Then mix that with various methods of higher-scale automation, and we might soon have self-building bridges, buildings, not to mention the self-building spacecraft and Mars bases – 3D printing may even be part of the reason we got back into space. Just the possibility of it is beyond amazing.

Well, reading this thread is what can kill all the excitement. There's nothing about running it on a phone. That's not an accomplishment. It's... nothing. Cool kids were doing it because they could a long time ago. It was a great and inspiring accomplishment for them, but that's only how they started changing the world, not the actual thing.

(I also predict 3D scanners would be most used for men to text a 3D model of their genitalia - everything else of importance is already in digital form.)
 
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YellowSubmarine said:
Wait, what the hell? My phone could run a 3D printer six years ago.

All you need is a profoundly simple program that converts a 3D model into instructions for the printer. Any of those can run on phones without much trouble. The earliest I found that could run on my phone is from 2009. It is made to operate a home-made 3D printer that you can first print yourself on the same printer.

Now, if only I could run Blender to make the models on a phone... Wait, that has been been done back in 2010.

Oh, you're talking about 3D scanning, and not 3D printing, so even the title didn't have the courtesy to match the content of the thread. Well, you got me there. That I couldn't do on my phone until 2013.

---
ETA: Here's my frustration with the OP. I am quite excited about 3D printing, which is without a doubt paving the way for some kind of revolution in manufacturing. Who knows where it goes... Just deploy some intelligent garbage processing robots, and the long-repeated proverb of "Garbage In, iPhone out" may finally become literally true, solving two of the world's problems at once. Then mix that with various methods of higher-scale automation, and we might soon have self-building bridges, buildings, not to mention the self-building spacecraft and Mars bases – 3D printing may even be part of the reason we got back into space. Just the possibility of it is beyond amazing.

Well, reading this thread is what can kill all the excitement. There's nothing about running it on a phone. That's not an accomplishment. It's... nothing. Cool kids were doing it because they could a long time ago. It was a great and inspiring accomplishment for them, but that's only how they started changing the world, not the actual thing.

(I also predict 3D scanners would be most used for men to text a 3D model of their genitalia - everything else of importance is already in digital form.)
Click to expand...


Um..the whole point is that it can be used for 3D printing and bringing it to the masses as a thing. Definitely an accomplishment as opposed to a handful of "cool kids".
 
RAMA said:
Um..the whole point is that it can be used for 3D printing and bringing it to the masses as a thing. Definitely an accomplishment as opposed to a handful of "cool kids".
Click to expand...
“Bringing it to the masses” is a question of price, ease of use and actual use cases. There's nothing yet to indicate that the turntable in your link will have more than a handful of users. No pun intended.

May I also point out that while 3D scanning as a concept is way more remarkable than 3D printing, just like 2D scanning is more remarkable than 2D printing... 2D scanners are something people rarely own. I don't think it's convenient to hold your junk on that turn table, nor it is easy to make a cat sit still on it without constantly staring at the phone – though, to be fair, the resulting 3D model would still go viral. I don't think anyone would go out of their way to buy this accessory. If we ever get a convenient 3D camera, past owners of these turn tables may seem as quaint as people who have confessed about once lying pantless on a flatbed.

But wasn't even talking about all that, I was talking about how you framed the thing – "OH MY GOD, MY PHONE CAN 3D PRINTER!!". Your phone is just another general purpose computer, and no kidding it can do anything a computer can do. Doing stuff on it means that exactly nothing has changed. Before a computer could make 3D prints, after a computer can still 3D make prints. MAGIC!

You keep saying 3D printing when it's not. Don't mind me if I keep replying as if it was...
 
3D Printing is the parent of the Replicator that will one day be able to pull atoms from a storage facility to build any item that is needed.

The first step is to be able to have the recycling program aspect of the 3D Printer separate the compounds used to create the item back into their base compounds.

Exampled: The program would look at a medical pill analyze it and then break apart the pill structure into the base compounds.
 
Dryson said:
Exampled: The program would look at a medical pill analyze it and then break apart the pill structure into the base compounds.
Click to expand...

Bad example since the next step is "receive cease and desist letter from drug manufacturer for violating their patents."
 
However, we're supposed to be doing this in our homes. Maybe still not legal, but more difficult for the drug manufacturer to come after you. And a potential PR nightmare for them if they do, depending on the circumstances.

Except, of course, we're nowhere near thinking about copying things that come close to the complexity of drugs. So I might as well add “They will NEVER find which moon of Jupiter I am on!” :p
 
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