10 Ridiculously Illegal Things You Can Make With A 3-D Printer

9. An iPhone

No. I'm not talking about the case into which you put your iPhone. Even I would be hard put to find much wrong with you whacking one out from an original design in Photoshop, or whatever. Just because you have an overwhelming artistic reverence toward all things animé, or slightly disturbing yet somehow cool 3-D skulls, does not mean I should criticise. Many reading this will be aware that it has already been done quite successfully. This is another example of a different kind of illegal, that's all. The music and DVD industries have endured the problem already and this scam can be boiled down to yet another version of the 'high value rip-off'. But surely, I'm joking? An iPhone? One of the beauties of 3-D printing is that you do not have to actually know anything about anything. Well, except how to work the printing program on your desktop. Maybe how to feed your printer with the right materials and understand the various processes that additive material printing uses, I suppose. Then there's a good deal of forethought and planning over how to get the thing done in the right sequence, but apart from those... You still don't have to know diddly about an actual iPhone to copy one. The question is, is it possible? If you are asking, can you 3-D print metals, plastics, glass-like resins that work just like glass and so on, then the answer is a resounding yes. Why not an iPhone? Or a bronze statue that gets passed off as a genuine Rodin that some gullible person is prepared to pay millions for? Or even someone's credit card? Many people would probably be prepared to pay for something they already know is not a genuine iPhone provided it's cheap and works; at least if it works for a decent while in any case. A bit like one of those fake Rolex watches you see people wearing, occasionally. Apart from making Apple Inc highly displeased and being against the trading laws of just about every country in the world, this sort of thing can do enormous damage to everyday consumer confidence as the market becomes flooded with fakes.