Talk about your cool tech toys

A recent article in The Economist talked about a really interesting idea: the Fab Lab:

STAR TREK had the replicator — a device that could assemble any object, atom by atom. The Nutri-Matic vending machine concocted drinks molecule by molecule in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", personalising them by analysing an individual's taste buds, metabolism and brainwaves (though then, it has to be admitted, turning out a beverage that tasted almost, but not quite entirely, unlike tea). Now, for those still stuck on Earth, Neil Gershenfeld, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Centre for Bits and Atoms, has built version 1.0 of the personal fabricator, and it is already being deployed around the world.

The "fab lab", as Dr Gershenfeld has nicknamed his invention, is a collection of commercially available machines that, while not yet able to put things together from their component atoms, can, according to its inventor, be used to make just about anything with features bigger than those of a computer chip. Among other tools it includes a laser cutter that makes two-dimensional and three-dimensional structures, a device that uses a computer-controlled knife to carve antennas and flexible electrical connections, a miniature milling machine that manoeuvres a cutting tool in three dimensions to make circuit boards and other precision parts, a set of software for programming cheap computer chips known as microcontrollers, and a jigsaw (a narrow-bladed cutting device, not a picture puzzle). Together, these can machine objects with a precision of a millionth of a metre. The fab lab's purpose is to endow inventors — particularly those in poor countries who lack a formal education and the resources to implement their ideas — with a set of tools that can translate back-of-the-envelope designs into working prototypes.

This is exactly the sort of successor to the desktop printer that Jon and I have talked about several times. The idea of being able to "print off" a three-dimensional object is very, very attractive. Not that I personally have that sort of skill . . .