Mechanical Engineering for Makers A Hands-on Guide to Designing and Making Physical Things

This is where I do my Woody Allen you know nothing of my work shtick because I had this novel Makers in 2009 I haven't read Makers yet 2008 it's why Brie Pettis went out and founded MakerBot and it's credited with like kickstarting the homebrew 3D printed revolution blah blah blah blah blah and it was a very bullish novel about 3D printing the reality hasn't lived up to the hype yet it may just be that we're in the long trough of despair as the Gartner hype cycle model has it I think the problem with 3D printing was that the patents had been concentrated into the hands of two large firms that had bought all their competitors including MakerBot and when those patents finally expired the big one was the laser centering of powder patent expired there just wasn't a big bang and I think it's because the supply chain for it still had a lot of proprietary elements and so producing the powder and producing the components that allowed for that remaining a very high bar and so we just didn't see the kind of new industry emerge that we would have hoped for and you know it's like 7 years since those patents expired or 5 years since those patents expired now we're seeing a few more of those powder printers you get a lot more UV cured epoxy printers because those came off patent earlier and they have a less complicated supply chain but still I mean powder printers we're talking about filament and just filament's just not a great technology it's been pushed in ways that you wouldn't even believe people have figured out how to do absolutely incredible things with it but it's not it's not something that you would make aerospace components for you know it's something that you make novelty Dungeons and Dragons dice out of.