3-D printing, what do you make of that? This controversial revolution has recently been hyped up to heaven in the press and media. The technology has suddenly taken a giant leap forward, leaving governments and law enforcement agencies the world over likely to get caught with their proverbial pants down. In one sense it is old technology, so what's all the fuss about? Additive Manufacturing Technology has been around since the 1980s. It employs a process that lays down minute layers of some material until a three-dimensional artifact has been built up. The procedure is governed by a computer program, yet it differs significantly from something like traditional CNC turning (computer controlled cutting machine) where software instructions control automated machine tools. That would be an example of subtractive manufacturing, since it involves removing material from an original block rather than adding to it. These printers used to be highly specialised and restricted in their application to expensive industrial processes; that was largely because the range of raw materials you could use was severely limited. That's all changed. If you want, you could nowadays fabricate a fully sized automobile out of cheese, or even a set of car springs out of chocolate, if you were feeling particularly mental. Modern, publicly accessible 3-D printing is a game-changer as significant as The Industrial Revolution, not only because the list of materials now available for use in the technology seems to grow by the day, but also since it has become commercially viable for manufacturers to make and sell to us, the 'great unwashed'. And as we know, some of us are less 'washed' than others. That very fact is beginning to keenly exercise the authorities. The trouble is that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Such radical democratisation of manufacturing processes is not necessarily in everyone's interests, least of all some of the big industries making big bucks from the things we are compelled to buy from them. Illegality is not merely inherent in an object. Any legislative difficulties with controlling what is produced is inextricably bound up with what we do, or intend to do with something rather than anything else. That's where the fun begins, so let's look at a few examples. Not all of them are necessarily objects that you could produce on your desktop today, but it won't be long before most of them are.
Hello, I'm Paul Hammans, terminal 'Who' obsessive, F1 fan, reader of arcane literature about ideas and generalist scribbler. To paraphrase someone much better at aphorisms than I: I strive to write something worth reading and when I cannot do that I try to do something worth writing. I have my own Dr Who oriented blog at http://www.exanima.co.uk
