I worked on what I, at the time, called software to do "3D printing" in the late 1990s. CAM - Computer Assisted Machining - software. (It was CNC drilling, not additive sintering).
Sure, it was very expensive (like a mainframe), not cheap (like a PC). However, it definitely wasn't sexy. Nobody, not even sci-fi nerds, was jumping to work on that type of problem.
It's actually quite schlepy, at least the part we did. Lots of maths and problems with floating point rounding errors, and weird edge cases of strange shapes.
Bet there are plenty of schlepy bits in the new, cheap world of 3D printing. We're certainly early enough, it has nowhere near even begun to play out.
I worked on what I, at the time, called software to do "3D printing" in the late 1990s. CAM - Computer Assisted Machining - software. (It was CNC drilling, not additive sintering).
Sure, it was very expensive (like a mainframe), not cheap (like a PC). However, it definitely wasn't sexy. Nobody, not even sci-fi nerds, was jumping to work on that type of problem.
It's actually quite schlepy, at least the part we did. Lots of maths and problems with floating point rounding errors, and weird edge cases of strange shapes.
Bet there are plenty of schlepy bits in the new, cheap world of 3D printing. We're certainly early enough, it has nowhere near even begun to play out.