Ideas for Three Dimensional Printing

Ideas for Three Dimensional Printing L. Edgar Otto

I would welcome serious ideas for three dimensional printing. What do you think you might want to use it for? Here are some of my ideas that come to mind:

*1 After many hours of thinking about very small and yet flat surfaces of whatever material for the purpose of making prototypes for my intricate candle molds I actually looked to see if there was anything available for it. This would be a lot better than laser cutting and may make a new level of advancement in a society that uses it economically. The metal processes came from Japan but are delayed due to the recent tragedies there that would make my task costly but easier.
As a principle of production a flat surface is preferred, not the constant rounding off of corners. This in the research and development metaphysics of the largest attempt so far at a candle company.

"Man's achievement in architecture was the taking of the Euclidean plane and standing it on edge."
George Santayana

*2 Around the late 70's I visited the crystallography professor who taught the class. He had a few wooden models of crystals (not stick figures) which over the years from the set were lost or worn down. He remarked how it would be nice to have them again. I offered to attempt it but he said I should consider the very difficult angles.

I recall reading that even with visual help from computers that there is something to actually holding a model of such structures like organic molecules that is a comfort to those scientist even if they just hang from the ceiling or are on the desk. This is part of understanding geometry too.

3. Perhaps a design for robot arms, or the parts of one such as the steel strings that convey the changes in say endless testing of lab samples that would be tiring to humans. The emphasis of which is to minimize the vibrations involved that sometimes stop the machine in its range of subdivisions of its product by action out of sync.

4. On these principles, some new, can we scale things such that these can make filters with the idea of desalination in mind? Can these be in any form, based on the general substructures such as of Fuller's tensegrity for lighter but greater strength of structures such that the overall shape of something could say mimic a natural tree in a landscape but contain solar panels if not filter out the air itself?

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