I heard a story on NPR this morning about the falling price of 3-D printers and scanners and copyright issues.
Does anyone really think that Disney, et. al. won’t have an issue with people making their own plastic princess or Star Wars character?
I heard another version a week or so ago about the possibility of making a functioning gun with such a 3-D printer. The consensus was that at least at this point, no gun made in such a way would work.
The tack the companies making these printers and scanners take is how wonderful it would be for everyone to make their own version of things to save money or design them the way they want.
But nowhere have I heard anyone discuss the environmental side of this. First there’s the do-we-really-need-more-stuff issue, and then there’s the matter of of making your own whatever out of molten plastic.
Basically, with one of these printers, you scan the picture of the image you want to make, put it in the printer and it turns it into a 3-D image that is then laid down in hot plastic a few microns at a time.
In a few hours, ta da, you have your very own whatchamacallit, possibly for a fraction of the cost of going out and buying the real thing, which might or might not be made of plastic.
And I’m guessing it’s not plant-based plastics steaming out of your $2,000 printer.
So there are likely to be chemicals steaming out and off-putting from your kid’s new toy.
The technology side of it is fascinating, I grant that. But really, do we need more plastic stuff?
– Linda J.
