I had a Thingmaker when I was a kid. It was a set of aluminum creepy crawler molds with some bottles of toxic and probably carcinogenic rubber goo. The molds were placed on a hotplate to vulcanize the synthetic rubber and the hotplate was probably 400F. I think there were also some sharp exposed edges of stamped sheet metal, and it plugged into a 120VAC outlet and it was not double insulated. Kids should know not to play with it in the bathtub, or outside when it's raining.
That was back when lawn darts were legal and I'd build homemade model rockets with payloads of gasoline or FFFF black powder that the sporting goods department would sell to ten year old kids. It's amazing that companies never learn not to sell hackable hardware below cost in the hope to entice customers into buying the high priced add-ons. Everything can be hacked, and it's usually more fun to hack it than to use it as intended by the manufacturer. It seems that everyone is selling a 3D printer now, and the technology is quickly moving mainstream. Meanwhile, I'm hacking my LinuxCNC router to 3D print RTV silicone rubber. If I wanted to, I could print my own creepy crawly rubber toys, a lot safer than a 1970 Thingmaker. On 02/16/2016 02:20 AM, Gregg Eshelman wrote: > BTW, Mattel is soon to release a 3D printer called Thingmaker, operated > with a smartphone app to print out toys designed using snap together > parts downloaded from Mattel. It has an auto-locking cover and the hot > end retracts to a shielded area so kids can't get their fingers on > anything hot. > > Price supposed to be around $300. If it's any good I'll bet there will > be hacks to use other software with it within days of first sale. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
